


Don't Tread On The Bear

by SuperMutantMeatShield



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 2, Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Corruption, Crossover, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, F/M, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Graphic Description, Grief, Headcanon, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2018-09-24 14:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9756542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperMutantMeatShield/pseuds/SuperMutantMeatShield
Summary: When Nate and Piper are visited by a pilot of the New California Republic, they receive an offer which is too enticing for their wandering types to refuse. For Nate, the once-in-a-lifetime trip seems like it would provide a much-needed break from the emotional toil of his work at Valentine's Detective Agency. For Piper, Nate's “recovery vacation” is a prospect which she wholly supports, but then the Mojave Wasteland may offer answers to her ancestry, as a tapestry of old grudges between two rival armies, uprisings, turf wars, and, of course, the happenings in Fabulous New Vegas begins to unravel. And more importantly;Where the heck is nineteen year-old Nat Wright?[I'm baaaack!!! Chapter 9 is up.]





	1. The Sycamore

**Author's Note:**

> My own, crazy Fallout 4/New Vegas crossover is finally in the works! It's taken awhile but I've had to reevaluate and really flesh out where I want this story to go! Here's the first chapter which gives you a brief glimpse into what has been going on with these characters (Nate, in particular. Next chapter will be Piper specific) since "Orange Colored Sky". Enjoy

The pitch dark night enveloped Nate as he hiked north west, a path illuminated by the shallow light from his well-worn Pip Boy. He was on familiar turf once again, after two weeks spent working on a string of hopeless cases at the eastern coast of the greater Commonwealth. It had been a relatively calm trek back from his base of employment, Nick Valentine's Detective Agency, and former residence in Diamond City. Old faces, friendly faces from the city had urged him not to leave so late in the evening, in fact, Nate could hardly recall the last time he'd taken the treacherous, feral-infested route through the Commons at such an hour. It was probably a hazy time, a time when he questioned his purpose, what he was still living for. And now? Now he had a heck of a lot of responsibility. The detective knew that the two who waited for him at home, the home he'd built for them, wouldn't be happy with him taking such a risk, but he also couldn't bear to be away from them for another day. Nate, of all people, knew how precious his time was in this present.

He took a long sip from his canteen as he paused on the bridge around a hundred yards from the front door of the ranch. The hiss of cicadas in the wood around him, as well as the rollicking sounds of the rushing stream beneath the bridge, could have lulled his aching body to sleep if he chose to rest any longer. Goodness knows it worked wonders for the Yao Guai who slumbered nearby on the creek. Onwards, he squinted in the blackness, a yellowy speck of electric light to guide him as he hit prairie soil. His movements became less heavy as he focused on the light and not on the throbbing muscles in his calves. A swarm of butterflies stirred in his gut as he got closer and closer, such luck, he ambled over the gate which covered the perimeter of the property without having to wrestle with the faulty gate, one of the home's lesser of many post-nuclear quirks.

Nate slowed his pace as he passed the wooden shed which ran parallel with the earthy path. Through the source of the guiding light, the kitchen window, he could spy two heads at the small dinner table. Facing the window but not able to see the man in the yard, sat the boy in a pair of cotton pajamas, ruffled hair, with features much like Nate's own. The other had long and wavy, almost black hair tucked behind one ear, gripping a pen between two fingers like she would a cigarette. Mother and son, Nate's partner and child. His whole world in the form of two beings. Nate thought about letting himself in the door, surprising them, but a realization halted him. 

The house was quiet. He was watching his son Miles enjoy a late night snack, most likely because he was unable to sleep. Not a prick of another being's ears as went the usual homecomings of either parent, alerting whomever was inside of the home. Nate's head dipped as he mentally faced the shed, mapping its exterior in his head, the lumbering tree on the other side of it. He remembered what he'd been avoiding while he was away, how he had felt an unhealthy sense of relief to get away from the silence a mere fortnight ago. Dropping his rucksack in the middle of the path, Nate turned and made his way to the shed.

There was a bottle of whiskey hidden in a compartment of his toolbench. Nate pulled the chain that attached to a lightbulb suspended from the vaulted ceiling and tossed the cap onto the dirt floor as he took a long, hearty swig straight from the bottle. The Irish burned slightly as it coated his throat with its sweet, sticky aftertaste. _It'll take the edge off_ , he guessed. He gulped straight from its neck a couple more times until the buzz went, _smack_ , straight to his head-- the price from having quit the drink at the behest of his partner shortly before she gave birth to Miles. He paced around the skeleton of the shed, feeling incredibly sheepish and a little bit drunk, on the brink of an episode he couldn't possibly fight. On his own, at his worst.

At one point, the middle aged man was on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, quietly, with his lower back against the seat of the ratty couch. Hands pawing at his scalp, spittle flying from his gaping mouth. In an effort to pull himself together, from succumbing to the agony and the alcohol in his system, Nate imagined his lover, Piper, in a perfect, storybook moment, rushing through the door of the shed after hearing the ruckus from inside the house. He imagined her holding him, soothing him with her lips and whispering that there was nothing he could have done. _Nothing. It wasn't your fault, Blue._. The things Nate knew to be true at the bottom of it all.

These thoughts, somehow, quelled the rage from manifesting itself within Nate. After a spell of deep breathing and self-reassurance he was able to get himself onto his booted feet again, albeit a bit too quickly. He stumbled to the back door, the nearest one, and just made it out in time to vomit in the yard, missing the steel bucket outside the door by a couple of inches. Steadying himself on the door frame and adjusting his vision to the cool gloom of the dark yard, he came to face the great, bare sycamore that loomed a couple of paces away. It looked like a crag of thorns from where its stalk shot out of the ground. Soon, it would hopefully bear leaves as the seasons shifted, revealing a more pleasant side of itself. Nate breathed again, clearing his mind, as he stepped slowly over to the base of the tree.

Even in such darkness Nate could make out the marker, a small, rotund boulder jutting out of the ground. He could see the shapes of other things as well, though he didn't know what. He flicked and fumbled his Pip Boy light on and off and caught glimpse of a small stuffed bear, covered in grime, a couple of toy figures, and a muddy plastic bowl. Nate chuckled at the prospect of these thoughtful offerings from his seven year-old son. Pride crested from within him, a flutter of ease. Bending down so his upper legs ran parallel with the ground, Nate reached out with one hand and stroked the trunk until he felt the fabric of the bandana that was nailed into the tree. 

“How's it goin', you filthy mutt?” Nate breathed, biting his lip as a small laugh reverberated through the back of his throat, hot tears stained his cheeks once more. He brought the loose end of the fabric up to his lips, it smelled of earth and mildew, not of the occasionally pungent smell of dried canine slobber and fur. Nevertheless it was a sobering moment for Nate. “I'm so sorry, Dogmeat. I'm so sorry.” He ran his hand over the smooth face of the boulder. The events of the past two weeks and the few before that seemed like an age away.

Nate eventually turned and sat beside the boulder, with his back against the rough trunk of the sycamore. He clutched Miles' mangled bear to his chest and closed his eyes, now taking in the scent of the sharp, late Spring night. It was just him and his best friend, separated by the terrain and the subterranean, the first living thing that gave a damn about him when the man woke up, underground, nine years ago.

He didn't know how much time had passed since the whiskey, since he sat down under the sycamore. Nate was at the point where he was too damn exhausted to sleep at all. He was sobering up, the aches and pains after a days walking had caught up with him again. The perks of making it to the age of forty in the wastes, he thought. At that moment, he wanted nothing more to climb into the warm bed he shared with Piper and drift off in her embrace. But first, he'd make sure that she had tucked little Miles in tight. Miles, whom old Dogmeat had loved very, very much.


	2. Bring It On Home to Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to attempt to update this story once every month, maybe bi-monthly if the words are flowing! Thanks to all who have waited patiently for this next chapter. The Mojave is coming soon, I promise...

Solitude.

The evening had become Piper's most cherished time of day, especially since Nate had been away. Over the past two weeks she'd been at her wit's end at various points in time, alone to raise Miles, the couple's brilliant, adorable, and totally rambunctious seven year-old son, who's caretaking required every ounce of Piper's energy and patience. At the end of the day, when she'd put Miles down for the night, Piper had gotten into the hopeless habit of pondering everything life had thrown at her, thus far: her shortcomings, her successes, the things she had yet to do-- in front of the bathroom mirror. It was the only time she had to her self, a sacrifice she'd first made a very long time ago when the Commonwealth's vices and hazards had left her on her own, very much alone, to raise her little sister. So why was it all really beginning to bother her now?

Slowly twisting the taps on the sink, cool, clean water cascaded into the bowl. A small thing which Piper continued to appreciate ever since her little family packed up and left the loud hustle and bustle of Diamond City, her home for over a decade, for the wild country. It was a good change, the right choice for the young family. Their small, single floor cabin was just south west of Abernathy Farm, on land that had held the Flynn Shipping compound. Nate had begun working on the overhaul of the whole property, including the addition of the cabin, when Miles had just learned how to walk. In fact, Nate and Piper had been inspired by their son to move to begin with. They wanted a place similar to the nearby Sunshine Tidings Co-op, where Miles could run around the yard, learn how to farm, contribute to the communities around him, and maybe skin his knees once or twice. The many contradictions of the still ungoverned Diamond City just wouldn't cut it anymore. 

After patting her face dry with a towel, Piper took another long look in that mirror. The truth was while time, thirty-three years to be exact, had been generously kind to her on the surface, she didn't know if the same could be said for how she felt underneath. She was utterly exhausted, finding it somewhat difficult to balance her writing while being a good mother to Miles. Sure, he was less dependent but she still had to keep a close eye on him nonetheless. Piper knew better than most that you could never be too cautious in the Wastes... or even in your own backyard! 

And just like that, earlier that day, mother and son took a trip to the Sunshine Tidings Co-op to check out the market. Piper went with the intent of purchasing some Radstag venison to prepare for a special dinner since Nate was supposed to be coming home in the afternoon. It turned out that wasn't the case and Piper was glad that she didn't let Miles down by telling him that his father might be back early. 

The incident occurred on the way back from the Co-op, where they were crossing the roundabout bridge wedged above a dam. For some forsaken reason, she thought, Piper let Miles bring a rubber ball along on the trip and, naturally, it went bouncing over the guard rail and down into the shallows at the base of the dam on their way back up to the house. As seven year-old's do, Miles went racing down the ravine at the end of the bridge to retrieve it, much to his mother's protest. Of course the boy slipped and fell into the mire, soaking himself in filthy water and mud. Thankfully, he didn't hurt himself or disturb the clutch of Mirelurk eggs on the opposite bank.

It was days like this where Piper was tired of being on her own to deal with things, her son's whims, his meltdowns. Sometimes the journalist's mind went to a darker place, where she questioned if it was her own fault, terrified that she wouldn't be able to protect Miles when the next accident came about...

And how Nate would react.

Piper gripped the edges of the sink, steadying herself. _Snap out of it! And stop whining so much, will ya?_

She took a deep breath and laughed at her reflection in the mirror. 

After switching off the light in the bathroom, Piper paced over to the bed and took a picture frame off of the wooden dresser with her. She plopped down on the edge of the bed and looked it over. _Winter, 2292_. Piper had taken the shot herself, while the family was visiting their cottage in Far Harbour: Nate looked like a wild man ready for hibernation with a big beard and long hair, grinning like an idiot. Miles, a toddler at the time, sat on Nate's broad shoulders while Nat, who had just turned fifteen, leaned into the rugged detective's side with an equally silly look on her face. Dogmeat could be seen trotting around on the silt flats behind them. It was one of Piper's favorite photographs. Some days she still questioned how she had gotten so lucky to share her life with that man in the first place. 

_Please be safe, Blue. For pete's sake..._ Or if not for her own sake, specifically, for the sake of Miles.

As she put the frame on top of her nightstand, the door to the bedroom creaked and hurried footsteps were heard on the other side. It didn't take any thought for Piper to realize who that could be.

The journalist groaned and strode over to open the door when she saw Miles back up into his own across the hall with a thud. Piper giggled at her son's perpetual clumsiness as he breezed back into the darkness of his bedroom.

“Real sneaky, buddy!” She followed him suit and flicked on the light just as he hopped onto his bed and dove under the blankets.

He didn't flinch as Piper got closer to his bedside.

“I think that was your fastest duck and cover yet!”

He threw back the covers with force, questioning his accomplishment. “Really?”

“Really.” She sat down on the edge of his mattress. “Can't sleep?”

The boy shrugged and averted his gaze from his mother in slight embarrassment.

“It was probably those Sugar Bombs you ate before bed...”

He frowned.

“I know, I know! I let you. My fault--”

“It's not your fault, Mom.” He interrupted as he got comfortable against the headboard.

“What's up then?” She asked, covering his legs with blankets.

“I heard noises outside! Scary ones... from the shed!”

“Aw, buddy.” She soothed, holding his small hand in hers. “Like what?”

“Um...” He paused, in deep thought. “Growling Deathclaws!!?”

Amused by his exaggeration, she bit her lip. _How would Nate reply?_ , she thought.“Well, I highly doubt there's a Deathclaw out there 'cause if there was, this house would probably be leveled by now.” _Shit. That's not how you tell a little kid..._

Miles' dark eyes narrowed, looking puzzled with one word that came out of his mother's mouth.

“Leveled. As in, the ol' Deathclaw would probably smell us and knock our house down to the ground. Don't be sca--”

“Could you stop a Deathclaw though, Mom?” He asked, a hint of excitement in his tone.

“Yeah, well--”

“Didn't you and Daddy kill a bunch in the Glowing Sea?”

“Not a bunch at once, baby, but yeah your Dad and I have put down a couple of those ugly mugs in the past. In the Glowing Sea, too.”

“That's so cool!” He grinned.

Piper was always surprised by Miles' eagerness to know about her and Nate's past adventures, as of late. It made her feel a little fuzzy inside when he used old words like 'cool' and 'awesome' to describe feats that were just commonplace encounters in the Wastes. Miles' interest was unlike that of his Aunt Natalie, who didn't give a hoot when she was his age. Nat just heard how goddamn reckless her big sister had been for getting into trouble like that and frankly? At least she was being honest.

“Now as much as I'd love stay up and talk some more, you're _way_ past your bedtime, buddy. We've got a big day tomorrow--”

“Is Austin coming over?!” Miles interrupted, again.

Piper smiled, “Yep, he's planning on it. So if you don't get enough rest, you might be too tired to keep up tomorrow. You feeling better?”

Miles nodded, defeated. “I think so.”

“Listen, no 'Claw is gonna wander into the yard anytime soon. And even if one does, he's gotta deal with me first.”

“And Dad!”

Piper nodded in agreement. “And your Dad, when he gets home.”

The mother and her son shared a silence before Piper quickly changed the subject, sensing Miles' was about to ask if she knew where his father was. She wished that she could've given him a straight answer. The last thing she wanted was for her son to sense her mild worry.

“Hey, I guess we could read one comic book before you go to sleep-- if you want, that is?”

The boy's eyes lit up with renewed excitement, “Yeah! Please?”

Piper went over to Miles' bookcase and pulled off a stack of gently worn Pre-War action comics. “Grognak or Astoundingly Awesome Tales?”

“Unstoppables!” He countered, giddily.

_That's my kid_ , Piper thought as she snagged a bright green cover from the bunch. In her humble opinion, the Silver Shroud and Co. came before the Barbarian's, franky, offensive imagining of lusty damsels in the solo Grognak comics. Piper even attempted to dress up as the Inspector, her favorite superhero as a kid for obvious reasons, one year for Hallowe'en.

“Alright bud, get comfy.” She said as she sidled up close to her son against the headboard so he could see the pictures in the panels. “We're about to get Trapped In The Dimension of The Pterror-Dactyls! Ooh!”

Miles giggled and leaned his head against Piper's arm. His carefree laughter was the best medicine.

The first couple of pages were quite fun, with Piper making up different voices for each of the characters. Miles often demanded that Piper read the speech bubbles twice because her delivery was so hilarious. Half way through, though, she noticed that Miles' eyelids were beginning to get heavy with sleep. To top it off, just before the boy drifted off, he ducked under Piper's arm and snuggled deep into her side. She continued to hold him like that for a while after she put the comic down. 

It meant everything.

~

As if in a dream, Piper awoke to a well-lit bedroom, her own (she couldn't recall when she'd left Miles' room, after he'd fallen asleep), to find someone sitting at the foot of the bed. The prospect of Nate getting home that night had seemed so unlikely before that Piper was a little startled to see her partner very much present, muscles rolling underneath the tight t-shirt that clung to his back. In fact, Piper was annoyed.

She turned her head to the side on the pillow, still paralyzed from deep sleep. The alarm clock read a quarter past 3 AM. 

“Blue, what the hell?” She groaned, startling her mate in the process.

His head whipped around, one of his unlaced boots hitting the floor in the process. “Hey, I'm sorry. Just go back to sleep.” He whispered.

“Too late.” She muttered, sitting up and rubbing the back of her neck. 

A quiet chuckle rumbled from Nate's throat as he put a leg over the opposite knee and began to unlace his other boot. “Sorry I'm late.”

“Yeah? Well ya should be.” She replied, matter of factly.

“I got held up in D.C., Pipes. I'm sorry. I don't know what you want me to say.”

“Huh, not the welcome you wanted?” She sighed, watching her tone. “Sorry, I'm exhausted. I got really, really worried when I didn't hear from you, that's all.”

“I'm fine, babe. I'm fine.” He mumbled as his other boot hit the floor. “I don't wanna fight right now.”

“Me either. I'm just glad you're home, I guess.”

The couple shared an awkward silence as Nate sat on the edge of the bed with his back to Piper, fists buried deep into the mattress at his sides.

The detective was the first to break the silence, head still pounding from his whiskey binge. “Hey,” He started, “Publick Express is doing well. A lot of people were asking about you.”

“Yeah?” 

“Neil and Monica send their regards to the boss.” Nate turned in profile and gave his partner a mock salute.

Piper smirked, pleased with herself. “Those two haven't burned the place to the ground... thank god!”

Since Piper redirected the Publick's HQ from the Flynn Shipping warehouse behind their home, the original Publick Occurences had become a smaller enterprise in Diamond City, run by two of the paper's biggest fans. Piper still did most of the printing from that location, since the infamous press had held up way longer than she expected, but now that she had her own, spacious office in the loft of the warehouse she planned to use the newer press she had there more often and use the D.C. HQ as an “express”, secondary location.

“Neil and Monica seem like they know what they're doing.” 

“That's why I hired 'em. Who else was talking about me, then?” Piper inquired.

“Who do you think?” Nate smirked.

Piper paused, digging deep. “It's not someone I don't like, right?”

“Correct, although Ann Codman _is_ mad that we don't bring Miles by 'as much as we should'.”

Piper scoffed, mildly repulsed by that woman from the Upper Stands, who had never batted a glaucoma-riddled eye at Piper or Nate until they had a baby together. Not many people were as lucky as Nate and Piper had been, and she made sure that the couple knew that time and time again. Perhaps it was out of jealousy: Mr. and Mrs. Codman never had such luck.

“Keep guessing.”

“Then it has to be Nicky, no?” Piper surmised.

Nate smirked. “Maybe we can take Miles to see him next weekend. He asked about you a lot.”

“Shocking.” Piper rolled her eyes. “How's the ol' bucket of bolts doing anyway?”

“Fine.” It had been awhile since Piper had visited her old home, not since Nat had home left a year ago. Piper hadn't seen her old synth detective friend in about as long, too. “He knows we're-- you're busy with the paper and being a mom and all. He just wants to catch up. You're like a daughter to--”

“Don't finish that sentence, Blue. It's weird.”

“You're _weird_.” Nate mocked. “He really cares about you, Pipes. No matter how much he used to pick on you and vice versa. Had something he wanted to talk to you about that he assured me was really important, too.”

“Well, then maybe we will take a trip to the Jewel then.”

“You sure the paparazzi won't freak you out?” Nate joked, in a mocking voice.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Piper chucked her partner's pillow at his back. She really didn't have a clue.

“So... how have you two been doing for the past two weeks, huh?” He leaned back, sloppily, and rested on an elbow on the mattress. Piper's eyes darted to where his shirt had pulled up to reveal his tanned stomach, making his scars look even more prominent through the thatch of hair on his belly. She shivered, fighting the urge to pounce and shower the area with kisses.

“Ugh. The kid's been bouncing off the walls all day. But other than that,” She paused, no longer distracted, “we've been great.”

“Sure about that?” 

She threw her arms up. “How do you do it? It's like... he's a little angel around you but then as soon as you turn the other way he's pushing my buttons and and terrorizing all of the poor harmless creatures that come within a thirty yard radius of the house.”

“Where do you think he gets the 'button pushing' from?” Nate chuckled and threw his head back so his face was closer to hers. It was the first time she noticed the red-rimmed, glassiness of his eyes. His pupils were completely dilated. “What?”

“Are you-- Blue!” She pushed herself up on her elbows and scooted closer to her partner. “You're drunk. Really?!”

“Listen, I--”

“You're actually drunk!”

“I know you're mad, I--”

“I'm not mad! I'm just, well, disappointed. Irked.” She clamped her palms on each side of his furry cheeks, head hovering over his, upside down.

“I threw up beside the tato vines behind the shed.”

“Yep, I can tell, 'lurkbreath.” She sighed, “Why did you--”

His brows narrowed, voice cracking on the last syllable. “Are you... interrogating me?”

“Well, it's not the first time I have, is it?” She smirked.

He pushed himself up to give her a messy kiss but was halted with her hand over his mouth. “Nuh-uh. Not until you give those pearly whites a brush, Blue. Wait--”

Nate groaned as he stalked off to the bathroom. 

“Wait! Are you okay though? Really.” She bounded off of the bed and paced over to his side. At the sink, Nate's movements were jerky. Piper watched as he absentmindedly grabbed her own toothbrush, slathered a dollop of paste onto its bristles, and jammed it into his mouth. She sighed, seeing most of this through the mirror. His eyes were a different kind of red, a little bit puffy, she had a strong hunch that it wasn't just from his drunkenness. 

“Nate?” 

He met her gaze in the mirror, briefly, before leaning down to spit. “Shouldn't have gone.” _Spit._ “I couldn't stop thinking about the damn dog, so I thought if I got back to work that I'd... I don't know.” He rinsed his mouth and turned to face her.

“Oh Blue!” Her forehead creased as she grasped both of his hands. “Doll, I miss Dogmeat too. So much. Miles, too. Did you see--”

“The toys? Yeah.” Nate half-chuckled, looking away.

Piper grinned. “The kid took one of my boots out there the other day. He swore that it was one that Dogmeat liked to gnaw on. It was from one of my favorite pairs but I didn't have the heart to take it back right away.”

“He's so good.” Nate beamed.

“He's handling it so much better than the both of us. I think he's been feelin' a bit lonely, though, so he's been acting like a little devil to compensate.” She watched Nate's composure crumble a bit as she tried to swerve the conversation to their son. “Hey, hey.” 

“I'm sorry.”

She pulled him close. “I guess that's the one nifty thing about you getting all drunk,” She held him as he breathed into her neck, letting his weight fall on her comfortably. “I won't have to pry your feelings out of ya. Let it out.” Piper felt a bit of wetness come to her own eyes, “Hey.”

“Mm?”

“Remember how we thought of old Meaty to be our test to see whether we were actually capable of raising a baby together or not? And then the mutt ended up being better at calming Miles and making him happy than we were!”

He nodded, a weak smile playing on his lips. 

“Just try to think of the good times, Blue. He was a heck of a loyal companion to us. I can say that he saved my ass many a time. He would've died protecting you, without a doubt before me.” 

“And that was fine with me.” He paused, smiling into her skin, “He protected me so I could watch your ass.”

She squeezed him as he left her embrace. “I'm not quite sure how to take that but I'll take it nonetheless.”

He stifled a laugh and met her lips for a short, but tender, kiss. “I missed you, Pipes.”

“I know.” She whispered and stroked his arm. “I get pretty jealous when Nicky takes you away from me for so long.” She drew out the last words before he kissed her again, hungrily.

“It's purely platonic, me and Valentine, I can assure you.” Nate slurred between sucking on Piper's lower lip.

“Bleh. God.” She pushed her lover away, playfully. “I'd sure as hell hope so!”

The couple were inching so that Piper's back was almost against the tile wall in the narrow bathroom. She felt Nate's hands snake around her slender waist and rest, lower, on either sides of her behind with a soft squeeze. “What then?” Nate cooed. 

“You're a creep.” She laughed in his face. “A drunk creep.”

Instead of meeting her lips again, Nate caused his girlfriend to gasp as he marked her exposed neck with a charged love bite. “Nate!” She yelped, exasperated. “I'm still mad, dammit!”

“I thought you weren't mad? You don't have any idea!” He laughed, cheekily. “I've been waiting for this patiently, for you, for two _long_ we--”

“Okay, hush!” In one very fluid movement, Piper pushed him so he landed on the foot of the bed, a couple steps away. She turned the bathroom light off and moved quickly to straddle Nate as he was pushing himself up to sit. Quite deliberately, she bounced on his lap a few times as she made herself comfortable in that position.

“Jesus.” Nate swore, mildly stunned by her swift movements. His face brushed her chest in this exchange as well, separated by one garment: an oversized t-shirt. Much to his luck, it seemed that she had already ditched her bra before bed. His heart thundered in his chest as if he was thirteen, discovering women's breasts all over again.

Piper could sense his inebriated daze as she tugged his shirt over his head. It was slightly damp with perspiration so she mock-patted Nate's reddening face with it, relishing in this momentary power she had over her partner, before chucking it over her head.

“Fuck. Easy, Pipes.” He protested, though with devilish satisfaction creeping into his tone.

“What? Want me to slow down?” She teased. “I mean, I know you have a few years on me but--”

“No!” He breathed. “I just hiked all the way from Diamond City today so I'm a little bit tired and sore but I'm game! Very, very much game!” He exclaimed, comically.

“Okay, okay! Simmer down there. Don't get too excited!” She winked, feeling what she imagined was a couple weeks worth of frustration pressing into her through his jeans.

“Well, don't go so fast!” He grumbled, leaning back on his hands.

“Gosh, you're no fun unless we're both drunk. Remember when we used to do that?”

He raised his eyebrows and brushed his nose with his thumb. “Where were we?”

Piper bit her lip, slightly embarrassed. “Never mind.” She pushed his chest as she climbed over him, further onto the bed and settling on her back as she removed her shirt. “Oh, and let's try not to traumatize the kid while we're at it, okay?”

“I'm with you on that one.” He answered, slipping a hand underneath his partner's back as he twisted out of his pants with the other.

“By the way,” Piper interrupted again, but only to sweeten the moment, “I missed you too, Blue.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In other news, I've been watching a bit of Marvel's Jessica Jones so maybe, just maybe, a bit of Jessica's badass-ness will creep into Piper's characterization in the coming chapters. Stay tuned!


	3. All Shook Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! This chapter was a total pain to hash out, there are likely mistakes abound, too many perspective shifts, etc. But, hey, the emotional rollercoaster never stops! This is all leading somewhere, I swear :-)
> 
> I will be updating tags accordingly but just to be on the safe side. tw: mental illness, more grief, alcoholism, heavy discussions (I guess??)

Light shone through the window above the bed and crept behind Nate's eyelids. He awoke to find that he'd overslept, the interface of his Pip-Boy informing him that it was already five o'clock. Stretching and turning his naked body in the tangled sheets, the soreness and tightness permeated his muscles as from the night before. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and yawned into his hands before he raked them through his short, golden brown hair. It wasn't the best sleep he'd ever had, but it was certainly not the worst given his condition. Nothing a hot shower couldn't fix.

It had been one of his greatest prides, something as damn boastful as getting the plumbing right the first time when he'd built his home from the ground up. Baths were, well, fun and all but Nate had seen how Piper and Nat had lived with a faulty tub at the Publick, sometimes having to bathe in dirty, standing water on its most stubborn days. Such was Diamond City, though. Nate wouldn't stand for another sponge bath any more than he'd shave his beard off.

As the stream cascaded down his back, taking most of his aches with it, the detective tried his best to not dwell on the night before. Or at least everything that happened over the past two weeks in the hellscape that had become Nahant. At just the thought, it was enough to make Nate's stomach churn, his blood boil. He felt the side-effects of his drinking binge as the sun peeked in through the bathroom window, making the pressure mount within his head, so he tried to shake it out with healthier memories: Piper's skin on his, her slowing breaths tickling his neck. They drifted off together as the sky turned purple at the onset of morning.

Damn, he couldn't believe he'd slept so late.

Nate closed his eyes as he rinsed the soap from his hair and beard, recalling the toothy, blissful smile she'd flashed at him in her post-coital glow, bodies still locked together for a time long after they'd finished. He decided that it was in the particular way that she held him, or clung to him, rather, after they'd switched off the lights. It gave him a hint that she just as scared for him as he was. 

And how could she not be?

~

After getting dressed in fresh clothes, Nate went down the hall to the quiet kitchen. There was a thermos of not-so fresh coffee waiting for him on the counter, that was even still acceptably warm as he poured himself a cup. It was probably foolish of him to think that things would change much around the house after two weeks but he couldn't help but wonder, as he lay in his bedroll in some derelict hostel or camp, if he'd come home to find that Piper had restlessly switched around of the contents of the cupboards in the kitchen or moved the furniture in the den. Maybe Nate held on to some belief that his domestic life was going to be like that, in a past time.

Boyish shouts in the yard brought Nate out of his contemplative state. He smiled to himself as he topped up his coffee, before sauntering over to the door: if Piper hadn't told him that he was home already, the kid was in for a nice surprise. 

The interior door was ajar leaving the outer screen door to rattle in the wind. He spied his partner from behind the screen, sitting on the porch steps, nose in a book, or journal, a blackened ashtray and coffee mug at her side. Smoke spiraled wildly up around her head in the drift, he caught a whiff of stale tobacco as he passed through onto the porch. Her eyes didn't leave the book as he came to lean on a post beside her. 

“... are ya in there?”

He blinked. “Sorry. What?”

“I said it's nice of you to join the land of the living, Blue. You okay?”

“Mm yeah.” The freshness of the air paired with the smoke caused his headache to subside, although the fog that packed his mind had yet to clear. He took a long sip from his own mug and scanned the yard for a young man with a shock of orange hair and the smaller boy who wouldn't be trailing too far behind... or ahead. “Sorry, babe.”

Piper chuckled as she shifted all of her stuff around and ashed the cigarette. “I figured you needed the extra z's more than me. Here, sit.”

“I appreciate it, I--” He crouched down beside her on the top step, holding the mug on his knee. “I'm _out_ of it today.”

“You wanna talk some more? What did you and Nicky get up to in Nahant anyway?”

Piper's concern was difficult to elude. He understood that she had been kept out of the loop as of late, of happenings on the opposite side of the Commonwealth. Nate pretended like he didn't hear her, even as her hazel eyes met his under the evening sun. The shouts, now coupled with steps hitting packed dirt at high speed, were nearing from the edge of the property.

“Nate?!” She whined, sharply, as he leaned in and their lips brushed. The familiar taste of clove and candy on her lips was always a welcome aphrodisiac for him, or in this case, a distraction.

“You're an ass,” She muttered, not having any of his fooling around the issues. “I was only asking...”

“Not now, okay?” He stared into the dark caffeinated hope in his mug. It tasted _awful_ so late in the day, but that couldn't be helped. “I know that was over the top, I just--”

“You're worrying me,” She swallowed as she gathered all of the things around her. “You're _really_ worrying me and you don't even seem to ca--”

“I care!” He blurted out, standing up, “Dammit, I care.”

Piper stopped and exhaled, pushing her dark waves out of her face. “That's nice, babe. I--” 

“I'm sorry.” He shrugged, looking more like a dishevelled, overgrown child in Piper's eyes.

“I should go and get dinner started.”

“Need any help?” He offered.

“I'll be fine. Go,” She nodded in the direction behind him as she kicked the screen door open with her foot. A holler from behind Nate, on the other side of the grove, caught his attention. He turned to see Miles wildly sprinting down the hill towards him. “It'll do the both of you some good. Ask Austin if he'd like to stay for dinner, too, would ya?” She added, before disappearing into the kitchen.

“Yep.” He huffed and put on a brave face for the one little person he knew he couldn't disappoint.

~

Austin Engill and Miles Wright had been swimming at a nearby creek all afternoon. Needless to say, Miles was elated to see his father waiting for him on the porch when he reached the top of the hill. Austin wasn't kidding around, the younger boy thought. When Austin told him that there was a surprise back at home, he had imagined a Pip-Boy of his own... or a new puppy! His Dad was more than enough, though. His Dad was a _real-life_ hero, sorta like Manta Man or Captain Cosmos-- but not really! And _that's_ why Mom had seemed so happy earlier that morning. Of course!

The seven year-old was still wet from his swim when he crashed into Nate's arms, so he ended up using the front of his Dad's shirt for a towel. Austin came down the hill shortly after, carrying a pair of small running shoes and brushing sand out of his signature mop of ginger hair.

As he held Miles, Nate waved over to the young man he'd known since he was an incredibly resourceful kid living in Vault 81. Now Austin was nineteen? Twenty? Nate couldn't believe how fast the time had passed since then. He thought about all the time he and Piper had spent collecting comics and other decently preserved novelties from their travels for Austin and his friend Erin Combes. With the Combes's and Dr. Penske's very generous permission, Nate and Piper were even able to take the two children for a short hike above ground once and awhile. It was around this time that it had seriously occurred to Nate that he had a _wealth_ of things to live for, namely his new family which consisted of Piper, Nat, and a new baby on the way. All sentimentality intended, time had indeed flown.

“Good to see you, kid!” Nate called to Austin, who had been their part-time gardener over the past two years, carrying on his grandmother's legacy.

“Likewise, man!” The vault dweller beamed before reminding his younger friend, “Miles, your ankle!”

Miles frowned. “It doesn't hurt!”

Before Nate could even ask, his son elaborated, “Dad, I cut my foot while we were swimming!”

“It's on the back of his ankle, goes down to his heel. He didn't even notice until we were leaving.” Austin detailed.

“Wanna see?!”

Nate put Miles down on the step so he could have a closer look. Sure enough, there was quite a bit of blood mixed with dirt streaking his right ankle from a dark gash. “Water must've been pretty cold for you not to feel that, champ.”

Miles shrugged it off, “Doesn't hurt!”

“Not even while you were running? Wait a sec...” Nate shook his head and picked up Miles' leg, with his other hand he used his fingernail to dig at the gash, picking a black spot around the size of a sunflower seed off of his dirt-caked skin. 

“Ouch!” Miles winced, jerking his leg away from his father.

“That would do it. I can't believe it...” Nate started.

“What is it?” Austin inquired, bending over.

Nate presented the culprit between his two fingers to Austin. “It was a leech. I thought these suckers were extinct.”

“I guess not.” Austin quipped, before realising that Miles was tearing up.

“Bud, it's okay. They're harmless! You didn't feel a thing because they freeze your skin when they latch on.” Nate soothed, tousling the boy's damp hair with his hand. “Let's get you patched up!”

Miles bit his lip, nodding profusely. “I thought I was a goner!”

Nate and Austin laughed, simultaneously, at Miles' pure comedic timing. Soon the youngest of the three even joined in, dark eyes twinkling.

~

Austin agreed to stay for dinner at Nate and Piper's place. He decided to take the couple up on the offer to crash on their couch for the night as well. He may have had his hunting rifle with him but the hike back to Vault 81 could be sketchy, even in the early evening. His grandmother would want him to stay put anyhow.

“Hey, I forgot to mention this before we finished in the garden today but I think something got into the the vines behind the shed.” The vault dweller was helping Piper finish up a corn, carrot, and tato salad for dinner. Piper had to cave and let Nate handle the Ragstag steaks on the grill or else they'd probably all be violently ill in the morning.

“Really?”

“Yeah! Maybe it was a molerat or somethin'? There was like this shit all over the tatos, smelled like puke, so I didn't touch it.”

“Yeah it was nasty, Mom!”

Piper nodded sagely, winking at a certain six foot-something-tall, whiskey-guzzling, bipedal molerat who was within earshot, setting the table as they spoke.

“Again? Awh.” Piper covered, “That's a shame. At least it wasn't me this time with my brown thumb, huh? Don't worry ab—Blue!” 

“How's Penske doing, Austin?” Nate interjected as he came up behind Piper and wrapped his arms around her front, an attempt at an unspoken truce. The reporter answering by rocking on her heels and shaking him off, playfully. 

Austin grinned, “She's doing better. _A lot_ better, actually. We're lucky that Curie decided to come back to the vault this past year.”

Dr. Priscilla Penske, who was Austin's adoptive grandmother, was getting on in years. She had been practically instrumental in bringing her successful research and methods in hydroponic gardening to the communities outside of the vault. Rad-free fruits and vegetables were being grown and harvested almost entirely across the Commonwealth thanks to her.

“We'll have to come by to visit when she's feeling up to it.” Nate said as they all convened around the table. 

“She'd like that. Curie says that she should be back in the lab in a few months! To be honest, I think being away from her plants and seeds is what makes her more sad than anything.” Austin joked before winking at the bored-looking boy who sat in front of him, “On the subject of visits, I think that the Overseer owes someone their first Pip-Boy pretty soon.”

Miles' eyes widened as he looked between the both of his parents for acknowledgment. Admittedly, Miles was a citizen of Vault 81 by birth and was therefore subject to receiving a Pip-Boy 3000 on his tenth birthday. That being said, he was only seven but Austin had been pulling some strings to get him a limited-access model, with a collection of Vault-Tec game tapes, in advance.

Piper raised an eyebrow as she helped her son cut his gamey steak into smaller bites, “Wow, someone's a pretty lucky guy, huh? You'll have to be really good up until then!”

“Okay Mom,” The youngster grinned before taking a jab at his father, who was twiddling with something on his own Pip-Boy, himself. “And I won't play with mine when we're eating. I swear!”

Nate looked up and cracked a guilty smirk at Miles as he picked up his fork. “This salad looks great, babe!”

Piper was unable to suppress her laughter and Miles and Austin were soon to follow. 

“That's fine. You guys can roast me all you want! I'll be here... enjoying this food.” Nate chuckled, his eyes darting around the table. He was a good sport. He knew he deserved it anyhow.

~

Once the table had been cleared after dinner, the four played the Blast Radius board game until Miles was the first to not be able to keep his eyes open. Piper always said that the controversial game was made in poor taste, but Nate, of all people, insisted that was the exact point of the game in the first place. It became a family favorite nonetheless. They were an extremely competitive couple so Nate figured that his girlfriend only said that because she was usually the one to get blown up, not out of sensitivity for him. Cards on the other hand? Nate never stood a chance to Piper “Please Fold” Wright.

Austin turned in shortly after Miles, taking the couch in the den despite his great height. The nineteen year-old was, well, enlightened enough to sense the tension between the couple once their son was out of sight and asleep. Piper, at least, seemed a bit more neurotic than usual. It was fine for Austin to think this of his friend, he thought. It was one of Piper's charms and usually helped her more than it hindered. The idea had first been planted in his head when he'd arrived at the cabin earlier that day: the way that Piper told him that Nate had come home in the middle of the night, almost as if it had turned out to be a burden. Whatever was going on between them, Austin believed with all of his heart, and all of those other old cliches, that they would work it out. It would be crazy to miss the fact that they were soul mates, through and through.

And hell, those two had been through worse. _That_ he was sure of.

~

“I still have a bone to pick with you.”

The couple were lounging on the cushioned two-seater on the porch into the wee hours of the night. The boys had been sound asleep for awhile, the house was dark, and Nate couldn't sleep because he spent most of the day dozing already. Piper had long grown out of sulking in the moments preceding a disagreement so she didn't mind staying up with her lover, cracking a few beers to help tire out the both of them, and the possibility of “having it out” if it should come to that. 

“Okay. Pick away.” The detective grumbled, taking a pull on the cigarette they were sharing.

She lifted the blanket higher over her shoulders and leaned into Nate's side, “Curveball. I know you don't wanna talk about Nahant or whatever so I'll try to respect that but,” she paused to mull over her phrasing in her head before speaking, “why are we pretending things are fine when they clearly aren't?”

“Don't--”

“I mean, in general.”

He closed his eyes as he suddenly breathed her name, flicking the butt of the cigarette over the railing.

“Blue.” She answered. There was a hopefulness in her voice that always soothed him, prevented him from coming to despise that pet-name she had christened him with years ago. “What are you scared to tell me about?”

She had a way of not sounding accusatory with him, or maybe she was just getting away with it. His second bottle of Gwinnett was giving him a nice buzz, “Dunno, babe. I like to forget about stuff, I guess. It's nothing personal.”

“Look, I can't watch you suffer and try to convince me you're trying to 'forget' something without telling me what that something is!”

“I want another baby.” He blurted out, without a thought.

“What?” She turned so that he was looking directly into her eyes, stonefaced.

“Before I get to be a grizzled old man--”

“Are you serious?!” She stifled a laugh.

“After Dogmeat-- things are too quiet around here, fuck! I just--”

“Blue!” She placed both of her hands on his furry cheeks, trying to ground him as best as she could. “Dammit, is that honestly what you wanted to get off your chest?”

He nodded quickly, his expression softening under her palms. 

“I don't believe you.” She shook her head, disapprovingly. “You can't just decide that you want to bring another kid into this world to fill some hole-- to heal yourself. You really want that?”

He winced.

“Were we totally ready to start a family when we had Miles? _Hell no_. But we wanted him so badly. Remember? We were somewhat ready, we didn't have any selfish goals in mind--”

“But we--”

“I almost died, Nate!” 

“I know.” 

“I just feel like-- Look, based on how things have been over the past little while I don't think we're in any shape to be making any big decisions like that any time soon. That's just how I feel at least.”

“No, you're right.”

A draft rattled the trees in the woods that surrounded their little home. She folded her hands around his and brought them up to her lips for a moment before letting them go. 

“I just want a baby girl some day. A daughter.”

She smiled, rubbing the pools that were forming in his eyes with her thumbs. “That's lovely, doll.”

“She'd be all you. Miles would be such a good big brother.”

“Even lovelier,” she whispered, nuzzling his chin.

He jolted before she could settle in his arms, suddenly alert. “Did you hear that?”

She shook her head and yawned.

“Sounded like,” He pinched the bridge of his nose, “something-- thrumming. Like a motor.”

“No,” She pouted. “Could be a minigun. Folks at the co-op were saying that a pack of Muties have been wandering around Concord.”

“No, louder.” His stormy eyes looked wild under the glow of the oil lamp. 

“I didn't hear a damn thing!”

“I pulled a goddamn leech today off of our son's leg today so I wouldn't be surprised if all hell's about to break loose out there.”

“Okay!” She groaned, standing up, having had enough of Nate's erratic behavior for one night. “This wasn't a good idea, see?” She gathered the empties and clinked the bottles for him to see.

“It was _your_ idea,” He smirked, coolly.

“That may be true,” She looked askance before yanking him to his feet. “Let's go to bed, you screwball.”

~

They went around to the back door, under the clothesline, so they didn't run the risk of waking Austin accidentally. Nate was still suspicious of what he heard in the direction of Concord, but not too worried. His nerves were already shot to hell, anyhow.

In the bedroom they undressed silently and crawled into bed, immediately seeking each other's heat under the blankets. He knew her body so well, every curve and arch. Some parts so soft he'd like to relish forever. Other parts he could trace in the dark, a scar here, a scar there, faint ridges of damaged tissue on her skin. There was a story behind nearly every one, some he'd been by her side when they'd been marked: a few stray bullets taken in Libertalia, a laser burn from the gaze of an Assaultron; some he hadn't, namely, the deep groove in her neck, inflicted by her Atom-worshipping mother, which she used to hide under a scarf almost obsessively. There was nothing romantic about any of it, nothing. Yet Nate always had this feeling, ashamedly so, that he liked to remember how the scars got there, even his own. Their lives were reflected in those marks, the bad and the good. They were reminders of all they had survived.

Of course, sometimes, he wanted to forget.

Nate felt her slip off, easily, in his embrace. There were so many things he wanted to tell her, so many things he wanted to bury, but couldn't. He'd meant what he said about wanting another child, he really did, but only to fill in the overwhelming sense of loss that had crept back into his waking thoughts. There were too many risks. Piper saw through him. _He_ was the one who kept secrets, who was good at helping others cope but not himself. But she never gave up on him. Never.

One day, soon, he would tell her about Nahant, about Liv, everything. He would tell her when he was sure that she wouldn't want to write about the whole ordeal. The detective drifted off with a nagging sense of hope in his gut, and it was to be the second night in a row that his dreams didn't project horrible scenes on his eyelids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lay all of it on me if you must! Criticism is always greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!


	4. Wouldn't It Be Nice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate and Piper are visited by a soldier from the NCR who has a too-crazy to be true proposal for them. In light of this happening, Piper takes Miles to Diamond City to get advice from Nick Valentine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to post notes like this when I think it's appropriate: I personally find this chapter to be the darkest, or at least has the most bleak content, so far. I hope it's not too ridiculous so I tried to balance it out a bit with some funny bits and whatnot. Moira Brown voice: "Try not to die!" No, but really: safe reading & take care of yourselves :)

Piper saw Austin off just before dawn as she sipped her first coffee of the day on the porch. It looked to be somewhat bleak outside for a May morning but that was all the more reason for Piper to get cozy by her terminal in the warehouse, working on a draft that was due to be sent off to D.C. that afternoon.

It was an issue she was unhappy to say that she'd been dreading. Yes, the classic “Ask The Publick” editions of the paper had once been a guilty pleasure for the journalist, a golden opportunity for her to outwit her greatest critics and get a bit silly with the more banal pleas for advice. Now? Not so much. There was a period in time where the letters became genuinely scary and made Piper and Nate all the more sure that they were ready to leave Diamond City to raise Nat and Miles elsewhere. For as long as the Publick had been around, threats were nothing novel, or even distressing. But threats aimed at the journalist's infant son were a whole other story and one which proved to be too stomach-turning for Piper to know how to handle without wanting to go collect some heads.

It took most of Geneva's term as acting mayor to get a handle on the ungoverned Diamond City. Even once most issues had been laid out and answered for, Piper found, unsurprisingly, that the paranoia among the public had only increased when one of the biggest detractors turned out to be a synth himself. Of course, Nate and Piper both had been caught in the crossfire of that confrontation when it all went down so, even if it was a few years after the fact, moving was also a decision made to give the city time to cool off in their leave.

Now on the other hand, and by her own tough standards, Piper felt like she hadn't delivered a scoop that was integral, or something that she could be entirely proud of, in a long time. Some days she actually thought about retiring from it all and handing it down to her team back in Diamond City. She knew she couldn't bear this prospect, though. The Publick had been in publication, under her hand, for sixteen years. She'd been drafting issue after issue for over half of her life and therefore it had become something of an extension to herself. To her, the idea of orphaning the publication didn't sit right, felt like a step backwards in a present where people were finally counting on her. The journalist had a built a legacy, a reputation which hadn't waned in the slightest in the years since the Battle of Bunker Hill and the subsequent fall of both the Prydwen and the Institute. In fact, Piper's audience had only grown in number since then, spreading out of Diamond City and to settlements across the wastes, via caravans and the like. Publick Occurences, at one point the most feared and disliked outlet the Commonwealth had ever seen, was now the most revered. And its founder and figurehead, once the most likely citizen of Diamond City to be exiled, incarcerated, harass others and/or be harassed, had become its vox populi. Who would've thought? 

Naturally, with that kind of exposure, it made sense that there would be crazies out there, reading the Publick, and looking to make fast enemies with someone who'd become so well respected. But since then, at least, the content seemed to have mellowed out a lot. Perhaps this was due to the letters having to be filtered through her assistants first, before being relayed to her own terminal. Still, that morning she found that her options were thick with the usual sketchy proposals, baffling questions about her personal life, and some downright awkward, though harmless, nonsense she couldn't believe a person would have the gall to ask in the first place. There was a funny inquiry that caught her eye towards the bottom of the list, mainly because it had been a long time since anyone had bothered to ask:

_'Dear Publick,_

_Any chance you might want to come back to the Jewel to run for mayor in 2298?'_

She couldn't help but crack up. “Shit, there's an election next year.”

_'I know some folks who'd surely back that campaign._

_Concerned Denziens of the Lower Stands Brigade'_

_Jeez_. Piper drummed on the desk with her fingers in thought before starting with her answer.

_'Lower Stands Brigade,_

_I'm flattered but I'm afraid that my records, if unearthed, by D.C. security will leave a lot to be desired. Mayor Sullivan knows this all too well.'_

Why couldn't they go knocking for Travis? Hell, even MacCready was more qualified than she was even if he was the mayor of a band of misfit children in a cave and not a whole fortified stadium full of people. Was Danny really doing that bad of a job? 

_'How about I give you guys a new title instead? For even considering me, how about... the Lenient S.O.B's?'_

_Oh god no_. Before tapping the backspace furiously, Piper leaned back in her chair and turned her head lazily so she could see out of the industrial windows on the northern wall of the warehouse. _What the hell am I doing?_ An hour or two had passed since she had finished that coffee and she was already beginning to feel like she couldn't possibly continue until she had more caffeine in her system. Minutes later, though, her nail-biting was interrupted with the groan of the factory door opening downstairs.

“Mom?!”

“Yeah I'm up here, buddy!”

Miles, clad in his pajamas, steadied himself as he reached the landing, carrying a plate of food in one hand. “Daddy says you need to take a break and eat.”

She yawned, shifting a stack of miscellaneous papers on her desk so Miles could put the plate down on the corner. Her prayers had been answered as Miles rushed back down the steps and came back with a mug of fresh joe which he'd left by the door.

“Daddy also says that I should stay until you have a few bites.”

Miles had a solemn look on his face, probably out of having just woken up than anything serious. Piper ran a hand through her son's morning bedhead as he clung to her opposite forearm, “Did you help your dad make this?”

He nodded once.

“Well, it looks pretty darn good! You know how much I love Tarberry pancakes.”

“I know you're gonna eat them, Mom.”

At that, a corner of Piper's mouth lifted, “Yeah but your dad's right though. I tend to get a little bit distracted when I'm writing.”

“How? Could you just decide to eat instead?”

“Yeeeah, but,” Piper giggled, “it's kind of like when you've been out playing in the yard all day and we can't get you to come inside to have dinner or take your bath.”

“What are you writing then?” Miles turned so he could take a peek at the terminal.

“Oh, you gotta check this out!”

After being pulled onto her lap, Miles careened forward and quietly sounded out the words his mother was directing him to on the screen. “What?”

“Some folks from Diamond City want me to be the next mayor.”

Miles squinted, “Why?”

“That's how I reacted, too.”

“Do you want to, Mom?”

“Not really.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I'm sure about it. Besides,” Piper wrapped her arms around his small frame and rested her chin on his shoulder. “I already have a job that I sorta like. I'm kinda stuck with it actually.”

Miles nodded towards the terminal, understandingly.

Piper shook her head and, in turn, gave her son a messy kiss on the cheek. “ _Two_ jobs, silly.”

In retaliation, Miles squirmed out from his mother's hold and wiped at his face. “Ugh, no way!”

Piper chuckled and sipped her fresh mug of coffee. “So what are you and your Dad going to get up to today, huh?”

“I dunno. Might go shootin'.” Miles shrugged and then gestured as if he were braving the kick of a shotgun. 

Piper snorted, “Well, I seriously doubt that.”

“With the BB gun!” 

For his seventh birthday back in October of the previous year, they took Miles to see a pre-war film called Butch Cassidy  & The Sundance Kid at the Starlight Drive-In. The viewing had inspired many of the boy's backyard finger shootouts and bicycle collisions as of late.

“You can come with us!”

“No, kiddo, I better not. I have a lot of work to get through today.”

His face fell. 

“Hey, you guys'll have fun without me! You always do!” she grabbed one of his hands and squeezed. “Just please, please, promise me, if your Dad is as crazy as you say he is, that you'll come back in one piece?” 

“Promise,” the boy smirked, backing towards the stairs.

~

The draft was sent off to Diamond City around lunchtime when the journalist finally began to pick at her two hours cold and half-eaten breakfast. She'd decided to pass on the questions regarding her future political endeavors this time around and opted for a real diamond in the rough like this instead: My grandfather up in Medford shells out a hefty amount of caps to send me a Yao Guai roast every year for my birthday. How do I break it to him that I've been veg for eight years? - Hapless Herbivore In Lexington. One can imagine that Piper was desperate for a break and a smoke once that was over with. Stat. 

After locking up the warehouse downstairs, Piper was surprised to find Miles lying on his belly in the backyard, with the barrel of his toy gun balanced on an upturned log.

“Miles!”

He rolled over and blinked in the sun as his mother approached.

“Where's your dad?”

He pointed to the house and stretched out on his back. 

“I thought he was taking you down to the pond today?”

Before the boy could reply, Piper was quick to interject.

“Just stay in the yard, okay?”

“I will.” Miles frowned. “Are you mad?”

But the boy already had his answer when she passed through the back door, without another word. Not at him, he thought, not at him.

~

Piper made long strides down the hallway to the kitchen where she found Nate resting against the counter with a bottle of stout in his fist. 

“Hey,” He said, looking pensive. “Uh, how was brunch?”

“Blue, I swear I oughtta...” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I really don't know what to do with you.”

“Good afternoon to you, too.” He pouted, taking a long gulp from the bottle. “Want one?”

“Miles, he-- I thought you were going to spend time with him today and instead I find him all alone in the yard, hunting god know's what with that BB gun, so excuse me for getting a little bit frustrated when I find you doing nothing inste--!”

The sound of the toilet flushing across the hall made Piper jump.

“Does it look like I'm just bumming around?” He nodded to the shut door.

“That's not what I said!”

Out of the bathroom, came a young man in sand-colored fatigues, zipping up his fly as he entered the kitchen.

“Never thought I'd get to use one of those babies off the grid! You do that all by yourself, Nate?” 

“Piper, meet--”

“Private Randall Peralta, NCR.” He stuck out his hand awkwardly towards Piper, who kept her arms locked tightly across her chest. His skin was as slick as his dark cropped haircut under his unstrapped helmet. “My friends just call me Randy, though.” 

“California.” Nate whispered, nudging her in the side.

It was enough to annoy Piper, that her partner would intone like that as if she didn't know full well about what kind of place the West was, seeing as her sister had taken a chance on one of the first chartered Vertibird flights out there a year ago. In turn, it was also enough for Piper to spiral into panic mode.

“I'm sure you're wondering what the hell a trooper is doing here in the Commonwealth but I can assure you it just may be worth your time, Miss Wright.”

“What did she do?” Piper mumbled.

“Sorry?” Randy squinted.

“Nat.”

“No!”

“Are you nuts, Blue? Why else would a goddamn trooper from the other side of the country be standing in my house in the first place?”

“I'm standing right here y'know?” Randy chuckled anxiously as he lifted his helmet to scratch the back of his head.

“We're sisters. Her name is Natalie Wright but she goes by Nat.” Piper stammered. 

“Yeah? How old is she?”

“She'll be twenty in June and--”

“Pipes, I'm sure she's doing just fine as always. Randy, just, please, go on. Either way this one's gonna talk over you.”

Piper was quick to elbow Nate in the ribs. Though a childish display, Private Peralta was finding it easier to empathize with the journalist being in shock and associating his residence with that of an absent family member living abroad.

“I wish I could tell you, Miss, but the NCR holds a population of six figures, an estimated 700,000 to be exact, and that includes a handful of other states as well.”

“You learn all of that in zoomie training, kid?” Nate asked in jest. “I mean, you did come by Vertibird right?”

“Yes sir. I landed it near a town north-west of here. Man, I pray it's gonna still be there first light tomorrow... Piper, as I was telling Nate before you got here, my superiors would like to invite you and your family to visit our post on the New Vegas Strip as guests of the NCR.”

Piper, who stood utterly confused, felt Nate's arm slip around her waist as Randy further explained his seemingly bogus proposal. It was almost as if Nate was actually buying into this shit?

“Um. Why us?”

“Well, uh, y'know you didn't expect your work to go unnoticed in other parts of this country, Miss Wright. Did you?” The trooped added, coolly. “The Mojave Express, for instance. Or, as you well know, the opening of our borders to people in this fine place as well as the Capital Wasteland, thanks to a weakened Brotherhood and the VB-01 models the public was able to secure in light of that, has brought a number of people to and from NCR territory in the past year.”

Piper wasn't so convinced. This kid could talk but he had to trip up somehow.

“Yeah but that came with a hefty price-tag. My sister used every last cap of her savings since she was a little kid to get a seat on one of those tin cans. Wait a minute, though.” Piper giggled. “You're saying that there are a bunch of bucketheads out there who are vaguely interested in my histories of the Fens Phantom and our capital city's lore?”

Peralta grinned, “We became aware of the Institute and received most of our intel on rumblings from the BoS thanks to you, Miss. That is, we discovered all of this years after the fact of course, but better late than never. My superiors would love to meet with you.”

“Jesus.” Nate raised his brow. “I guess you've made it to the big leagues, babe.”

“So,” Randy said, “what do you guys say?”

~

“I know it's insane. It's batshit insane! But, really, what have we got to lose?”

“Our home.” Piper sighed, bent over at the kitchen table buckling her boots. “Our jobs. Hell, our _lives_? Maybe. I don't know.”

“So what if we have to stay there for awhile. It could be fun. There's no way we could afford a trip on our own any other way. I always wanted to go to Vegas.”

“You've never-- I mean, you never went before _everything_ happened?”

Nate groaned. “Why do you still do that?”

“What?” She grinned, bemused.

“Ten years and you still skirt around saying 'the bombs fell' around me.”

“Well, I think I have reason to do so. That part where you--”

“Ah! 'Where I lost my first family'. But a decade later, things are good, I have you, I have Miles, I have a fucking pinch in my lower back that gets worse every year, I have a chance to go to Las Vegas, baby!”

Here was a man whom Piper couldn't possibly imagine her life without but who had also been testing her sanity as of late, more than ever, and this same man, now, was planning on waltzing down to Vault 81, three sheets to the wind day-drunk, by himself to gather supplies and hire Austin, a young man who looked up to Nate greatly, to house-sit for who knows how long. Maybe forever. And maybe just disappoint the kid forever while he's at it. Piper, on the other hand, was going to continue east with Miles to make a similar visit to the great, green haunt of her past. She couldn't be more bewildered with the unfolding of her life that day and the same could be said of her near future.

 

~

The bright, inner city skies were changing to a darker orange by the time Piper and Miles made it to the city gates. Earlier, they stopped at a campsite by the Chestnut Hillock Reservoir to eat the dinner they'd packed. Nate had opted to hike up to the Vault to have dinner in the Summerset's cafeteria instead, he wasn't too hungry, so mother and son got to enjoy the wilds outside of the Fens on their own.

It was a pretty special campsite cookout from Piper's perspective. She got to teach Miles how to make a pretty mean Radstag and vegetable stew, using the leftover 'Stag they had from the night before. It also took her back to a particular memory, when a certain sleuthy synth saved her sorry ass during the roughest period of her life. She told her son part of the story, relating to the area, while they ate. She pointed to where the ghouls came down the hill and how Nick bought her fib that her father taught her how to shoot. Miles Sr. letting his eldest fire a semi? No way! Through and through, to his last breath, she was his baby girl, no matter the circumstances, and he'd be damned if she didn't pick a twelve gauge like her old man! Of course, he only kept a trusty 10mm in the safe when the girls had to leave town. If only!

Back at the gates to Diamond City, Piper was greeted warmly, _warmly_ , by security and let in without a question. It had been years since this attitude towards her had become the norm, nevertheless it still made her feel a bit funny to not get the full treatment: pat-down, interrogation, eventual shunning and all! Then again, it had been a whole year since she'd been back. Miles, even longer. The boy was probably a whole foot shorter the last time he was there which prompted one of the veteran guards to joke, in extremely poor taste, that he could now be sure that the journalist didn't fake her pregnancy so she could get away with snatching a child synth from the Institute. 

In a more pleasant episode, Arturo and Moe were packing up their respective shops for the night when they passed. Piper was able to get the components she needed from Commonwealth Weaponry while Moe showed off his various pre-war baseball collectibles and more savage Swatter variations to the very much invested seven year-old boy. Piper knew that she couldn't fight the prospect that in another seven years, maybe less, Miles would probably be one of Moe Cronin's best customers, using all of his allowance to bring home a real spiked Rockville Slugger, maybe he'd form a hormonal, petty Swatter Gang to boot. But god, could Piper only hope in secret that he'd let her join, too.

“Alright, bud, time to head for the alley behind third base. Hey, haven't I told you that the only swatting that ol' Moe has gotten in years is from a rolled-up issue of the Publick after I caught him taking money from kids. My first big bust!”

“Yeah, kid, and it was the first time your Ma got herself busted and locked up in the barracks, too! Heheh!”

Okay, so Piper's reception with the old townies wasn't _all_ that warm and hunky-dory. Even so, it was this kind of Diamond City behavior that she got her thrills from... even if her son was watching and listening.

~

Of all places and things that Miles did not get scared of, namely: Walden Pond after dark, the story of Gorski's cabin and the raider-Deathclaw attack during the battle of Concord, all within throwing distance of each other from their residence, on a circuit, only Miles would get scared of a dark back alley in Diamond City, lit by a single, neon pink sign in the shape of a heart. The boy spent the few steps through the passage, cowering behind his mother's arm. 

At the door, Piper squatted down so she was level with her son. Under the pink glow, her hair and eyes looked so much darker than usual so he tried to imagine that he looked the same with his own shaggy, unkempt 'do. 

“Hey, don't ya think that radioactive pools would be so much cooler if they were pink?” She asked, trying to cut through his jitters.

His composure softened and he smiled, “Mom, I think we look like those pink birds people used to have on their lawns!”

Piper chuckled and bit her lip, “Maybe!”

“C'mon let's give your Uncle Nicky such a good surprise that he'll be shitting bolts into next week!”

“Mom!” Miles scolded.

“I know, I know. Your Dad's not here so that'll be just between us, alright?”

~

Nick Valentine was trawling his memory banks by his desk when the knocks came. It was something Nate had told him awhile ago, or maybe it was someone else, that his memories would start overwriting themselves every fifteen to twenty years. Either way he wouldn't know it when it happened and it had definitely occurred before in his existence, leaving him pretty mild on the issue.

Opening the door to find two friendly faces and not a late night walk-in case waiting to blow into his office was a great relief. Piper and her little ankle-biter, who wasn't so little anymore, looking less and less like a copy of Piper and more like his own person. Valentine would drink to that, if he could. On the other hand, Piper hadn't changed one bit while the two men in her life were beginning to show their age in their own, natural ways. Sure, her locks tended to stay long now and free of any hats, but Piper only seemed to mature and mellow underneath her exterior. 

The change for her was much more gradual and had been rooted in her for longer, ultimately a collateral effect of the situation she'd been put in when she was younger, raising a two year-old sister on her own. The real change only happened, and Nick would argue he was the first to understand it, was when Piper found out that she was going to be a mother. The synth was mildly embarrassed that there was a good chance that Nate didn't know a little tidbit at that time, that Piper came to tell Nick first, _before_ she went to the father of her baby, was very telling of a difficult, often distressing moment in the journalist's life. She'd probably say otherwise now, Nick thought, that during that time she was happy and wanted to have a family. At the time, Nick understood that he was the only person who knew about Piper's fractured and caustic relationship with her own mother: not Nate, especially not little Natalie, whom the elder sister felt that their mother didn't deserve. But as his friend got closer and closer to holding her son in her arms for the first time, Nick could see the light begin to show. All that bitterness, strife, and hate dissolved when Miles arrived, but not because of him, more because Piper and Nate decided to clean up their acts. The synth hoped, prayed, that he would always be able to recall the day that the soon-to-be parents asked him to be Miles' uncle, his godfather: that if anything should happen to them, he'd be the one to teach the kid how to shoot and get the answers to the questions... simultaneously. 

“Can we come in you old clank?” Piper said, mischievously. Maybe the detective was a bit too keen to give her the maturity pass after all.

“Eh, I suppose. As long as you don't harvest me for parts to make your kid more efficient. That'd be a scandal.”

“One for the ages.”

~

It was late, late enough that Miles head had started to get heavy against Piper's side only minutes into their catch up session at Valentine's Detective Agency. Nate was supposed to meet up with them soon, Vault 81 wasn't far off from Diamond City, but nevertheless the synth offered to let Piper put Miles down on the bed upstairs until he did arrive. In turn, Piper was quite grateful for Nick's suggestion, which would give them the time to get a few things off of their chests.

Nick reacted to the NCR/New Vegas deal in a way that only Nick could: _I expect a postcard... and a share in the winnings._ On the topic of the casinos, which Piper was understandably the least interested in, Nick also inclined to pitch in a few cents: _Don't buy too many hookers. Oh and if you, of all people, can't get banned from at least one of the casinos, I give up on hope._ In all seriousness, though, the detective admitted that the whole thing was _shady_ , which made Piper, despite her limited knowledge of the NCR, consider leaping from the top of Trinity Tower.

“Listen, Piper, I'll stop mucking around now. This whole business is crazy to imagine, _that_ we know, but have you ever thought that it could be a real, healthy thing for you and your beau? Just to get away for awhile and start... working on some things?”

“Wow.” Piper exhaled. “You always like to flip it over to the heavy stuff,” she snapped her fingers, “just like that, don't ya?”

“It's a specialty of mine. C'mon, kid. I've known you for half of your life now. What's going on with you two?”

The journalist giggled, nervously, “I honestly don't know where to start.”

“The drinking? The mood swings? Your pick.”

Blood rushed to Piper's cheeks, making them burn hot.

“You don't think he pulled that shit on me while we were up in Nahant?”

She felt like she was floundering in the middle of the ocean, up to the gills in deep water. Was she in denial until now? Probably. But she was going to fight it.

“Okay.” She exhaled. “Why don't you start with what happened up in Nahant in the first place and then I'll fill in the blanks after.”

“He didn't tell you?” Nick asked, surprised.

Piper shook her head, furiously. “It was like yanking teeth to get a peep out of him. Believe me, I tried.”

“I swear,” Nick said. “After everything that went down... He made a promise, an oath to me that he would talk to you. I was right.”

“Is that why you told him that you needed to talk to me about something?”

“Yeah, kid. I didn't believe him. I saw it comin' from worlds away. After Dogmeat got sick. And you must be thinking: 'why do I feel like this is gonna be something that could have been easily prevented if he didn't just bury things inside until they explode?'”

“Pretty much, Nicky. So what happened?”

~

It wasn't until after he got back from the flesh-baking forests of Shanghai that Nate started to hear about the S.I.N.S.: Shakes, insomnia, night terrors, suicide. It sounded like a wild-eyed afterthought of a concept. Totally offensive and relentlessly laughable until the bodies of vets starting piling up at home. It seemed like the simplest idea, that one always understood before enlisting that you go take the call to do some good, serve your country and then get horrendously fucked up in the process. Add dubious performance enhancers into the line of duty (codename PSYCHO) and you have yourself some bloody controversy in the mix. Now go out and get some Commie ass!

Nate first got his own taste of the whole phenomenon at the worst of times. He returned home to his native Boston, to a family crisis: his brother, Hal, a part-time programmer for RobCo, was living in their parent's basement in Maine when blew his brains and partially decomposed over the suicide note, and Nate's wife, Nora, four years his senior and much too savvy for him in every way, was three and a half months pregnant, finishing her law degree while holding down the fort at their apartment in downtown Concord.

He embraced Nora at Hal's wake, swearing to her that he was _completely_ fine, well assured that he was “one of the lucky ones.” He lied to her, he lied to his whole family, knowing all too well of what was coming for him, for his unborn son, and the rest of the world. Thus came each stage on a silver platter. 

The first two were relatively manageable with something hard to drink before bed and right after Nate woke up. Nora almost missed her bar exam because her husband had locked himself in the bathroom where he knelt on the floor, sobbing like an overgrown toddler. Two weeks after that, he collided with a guard rail in their Corvega and shattered a kneecap. Luckily, Nora wasn't involved in the accident and was at home making devilled eggs and peanut butter sandwiches for herself. 

Off his feet and couch-ridden, Nate drank more but never did or said anything to hurt his wife, he usually just passed out watching kids' cartoons on the TV. While this happened, Nora began to read about PTSD along with her "Pre-Natal And Beyond" books of which her mind began to blend ideas from.

On the day that Shaun was born, there happened to be a riot around the corner from the hospital. All hell was breaking loose and they watched safely in the gray confines of the delivery room. Nate blamed himself for Shaun being born premature, a full month ahead to be exact. To the extent that Nora didn't realize how high her blood pressure had climbed while caring for Nate. And by God, if Nate and Nora hadn't been white and middle class there was a fair chance that their son would have been left to breech and suffocate while hanging out of her body. 

Not a figure on the screen had the gall to have mentioned that this was a riot at a military checkpoint, next to the hospital, flipping the context entirely. These were Chinese-Americans fighting back, trying their very best to revolt against the discrimination, racism, and gross human rights violations their people had faced for generations upon generations.

The rest of the public watched from home, in the Super Duper Marts of America, while sipping Nuka Cola, in the delivery rooms, the morgues, the nation's airports, ugly, indifferent, thoughtless, boldly going where no Hubris Comics hero has gone before! 

Six feet. Ground zero.

Blast off.

~

“What do _you_ think happened, kid?”

“I don't know. The way he brushed it off he made it sound like it had been a chem deal gone wrong or something. Bloodbath?”

Nick's face fell. “Piper, if every case we took was simply a ' _chem deal gone wrong_ , I would've thrown in the towel a long time ago.”

“Touche.” Piper rolled her eyes, “Forgive me if I've gone a bit soft since having a small human being to mind after, constantly worrying if he's going to grow up to do bad shit, or if he's gonna have to shoot someone before he turns eighteen.”

The synth detective was unimpressed, “You know that's not what I meant, kid. Nowhere _near_ what I meant.”

The reporter rubbed her eyes. In her case, she didn't mean to get hotheaded with her old friend. She was vulnerable and Nick sure knew how to eke it out.

“It isn't about Miles, remember? He's a _good_ kid. He's got a heart that's bigger than both your's and Nate's combined. And that's saying something.”

Piper giggled at this as she swiped at the tears that fell sparsely over her freckled cheeks.

“Here, kid.” Nick found an old scarf in one of the desk drawers and handed it over. “I mean it: f those NCR guys are the real deal, it might be a good thing for you both.”

“A vacation, huh?”

“Yeah. A getaway. I don't worry about the two of you as a unit. I worry about you two on your own.” He sighed before continuing, “When Nate and I were up in Nahant, we received a tip that there was a Ronnie Love, this real sicko, pimping out girls. Young ones, mostly from Goodneighbour or ones that had worked in the Zone. And Nahant stinks,”

“Quite literally,” Piper snorted.

“Right. And so this chump decides to make Nahant a little fishier, a little filthier...”

“He decides to shack up?”

“You bet. A whorehouse, chem-den, whatever you wanna call it. A couple of gangs get wind of it and soon the place is packed with raider camps and a bunch of terrified, stir-crazy girls. I was tipped by a scavver who brought one of those girls, the only one to escape, to Gibson Point. Her name was Olivia: sixteen years-old, parents M.I.A., quicker to take a double dose Med-X than accept a meal.”

“Typical,” Piper muttered. Naturally, the detective wanted to smack her.

“Your beau got attached to say the least. Think in terms of how close him and your sister got when you both started going steady--”

“Or Cait?” Piper smirked.

“Sure. Anyway, Nate rounded up a few Minutemen in the area and we took out the scum. Easy. But Liv got caught in the middle of it. Ronnie had the other girls gassed while we staged the attack. There were twelve others, or so she thought.”

“Christ.”

“She cut herself from ear to ear. Nate tried everything he could to stop the bleeding but she... Nate watched her die. I know it's not anything novel, to any of us, but you know Nate's capacity to empathize, to protect, exceeds all of ours.”

“He took it personally.”

“Definitely. That's why I wanted you to convince him to take a leave of absence, to sort out the personal and the emotional--”

“We probably should have started sooner, don't you think?”

“Maybe so... maybe so. I just don't wanna see him fall over the edge again. The sorry guy _needs_ you, Piper.”

“You're putting him out of work? Huh, I think I'm okay with that.” She paused.“Else he'll probably just crawl away like an animal that wants to die alone under the porch.”

“'Leave of absence', if you will. Regardless of whether you take off to the Mojave for a while or not. But you need to be--” The synth was interrupted by a flurry of heavy knocks at his door.

“Abracadabra! Who's hungry?” Came a muffled voice on the other side of the steel. The man of the hour to be sure.

“I'll go wake up the little fella. You guys should probably get a move on if you want to get out of the Fens before dark.” Nick said as Piper moved to answer the door. 

“Good timing, Blue.” 

Nate's hiking duffle bag hit the ground with a thump. “Check out the astronaut food they had at the commissary!” He shook a small, silver packet in front of Piper's face.

“What the?” Piper grinned.

“Hey, they're light and probably as tasteless as an MRE and the smoothies come in about six different flavors!”

“Hail, Penske, hail.”

Nick appeared around the corner, leading a stunned Miles down the stairs. “Sure you don't want to crash at the Dugout for the night? Or at least divvy up the couch and the bed upstairs here?”

“'Preciate it as always, Nicky, but,” Piper looked to her partner and then back to the synth, “I can't believe I'm saying this. I guess we gotta go home to pack.” As she looked to Nate for concurrence, she was surprised to feel his hand slide under her shirt and across the small of her back, binding himself to her lovingly. Gestures like this were always impossible to anticipate, but welcome. Always.

“Yeah, I still think I got some kind of itching bugs the last time me and some press lady decided to play catch-up at the Bobrov's place.” 

Miles frowned up at the both of his parents as if he was about to ask what the heck his dad meant by that, but was frankly too tired to push it.

“Be safe, all of you.” Nick said and was then surprised to be on the receiving end of the boy giving him a hug. “Keep your folks in line, Miles. They have a bad habit of getting themselves into trouble.”

“I will,” Miles laughed, smiling up at the coolest uncle a kid could ask for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big shout-out as always to Shellbacker, whose thoughtful advice and support of my nutty headcanons means a lot! If you're reading this and for some god-knows-HOW? reason haven't read Shellbacker's "Story of The Century" you are seriously missing out!!! Another MSS/Piper story that could totally be published into a novel at the level that it's written at!
> 
> Also, if you happened to find yourself interested on where that story about Nick and Piper fighting the ghouls came from I have another story on here all about that. It's called "Running Scared". Teenage Piper, bewildered Valentine. I think it's pretty decent if I say so myself, aha!
> 
> Thanks for readin', folks!


	5. I Can Never Go Home Anymore (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bags are packed and the plans are set... mostly. Nate and Piper intend to work out a few kinks in their relationship before leaving their lives in the Commonwealth behind, short term.

The moon was high above the cabin by the time that the family reached the creek. It wasn't in their original plan to get back so late, especially with a long, potentially treacherous day ahead. They'd been held up by Piper, who remembered at the last minute that she had to poke her head in at the Publick to let her employees know that she, too, would be taking a leave of her duties to the paper, effective immediately. 

Could she even do that? Neil, the Publick's editor by day, brooding poet by night, was dumbfounded at the abruptness of it all to say the least. On the contrary, Monica, having penned guest editorials in the past and having a knack for astrology and horoscopes, saw that her boss was giving her an opportunity to put her name out there and maybe even steal the show in Piper's absence. If they ever got desperate, the pair knew that Piper had a pretty good selection of canned material in her database that they could clean up pretty easily.

Piper, who still felt numb after this whole ordeal, was silent for much of the walk back home, maintaining the front that she was only tired. _Her_ newspaper, her life's work in the hands of two kids? She kept asking herself what she could've possibly been thinking when the orders rolled off her tongue... and one name came back:

Natalie Wright.

The whole time Nat had been on the journalist's mind, troubling her to no foreseeable end. Even though this whole trip had a supposed purpose for Nate to cool down, didn't mean that Piper would pass up the chance to connect with her sister, _if_ there was a way to do so.

~

Without a word to each other, the couple went to separate areas of their home as they stepped through the hall. Piper felt muggy and went to wash up ahead of a late night of packing while Nate carried their snoozing son to bed. 

Nate nudged the door open with his foot, flooding the room with a crack of light from the hall, and stepped over to the twin-size bed. He'd been carrying Miles on his front after the youngster's sleepiness had gotten to be too much to carry on walking past Oberland Station. If it weren't for the groan that Nate let out as his son's small body was laid down on top of the quilt, the boy probably wouldn't have stirred either.

“Daddy?” 

“Yeah. Sorry, buddy.” Nate huffed in the dark, kneading through the awful ache in one of his biceps with his fingers. “Just close your eyes and try to get back to sleep.”

The boy whined and rolled onto his stomach.

“Did you have a bad dream?” Nate asked, taking a seat on the edge of Miles' bed and flicking on the lamp.

“Nuh-uh.” Miles mumbled into his pillow.

“Here, let's get your boots off. You're getting dirt all over the blankets.”

“I want Mommy.”

It came out of the boy's mouth as another mumble but the impact was stifling. 

“She's busy in th--”

Miles cut his father off by repeating his demand, albeit with a bit more bite. Then he sat up, kicked his shoes off violently, and then flopped back down onto the bed.

Nate swallowed, frozen in place on the bedside. It wasn't that Miles was acting out in his protest, which he still _was_ per se, but that Nate had an inkling that this was a child's way of punishing him for his treatment of Piper over the past 48 hours. He knew it would be completely out of line to scold his son, but it didn't negate the fact that it deeply hurt Nate. Worst of all, he had hurt the one who had been desperately trying to help him.

“I'm sorry.” Nate whispered, feeling a bit dumb since the person he really should have been seriously apologizing to was in the next room. The man had been feeling cynical, underestimating his son's intelligence and the fact that it _was_ self-destructive behavior like Nate had shown that could leave a lasting impact on a child for life, even at the tender age of seven. “I love you, alright?”

“Okay, Dad.” 

“We've got to get up early to pack up your things so think about what you might want to bring to Nevada, okay?”

The boy covered his head with the comforter. “Can you turn off the light?”

Nate chuckled nervously, doing as Miles asked, and left his son to stew without another word.

~

Piper was brushing her teeth when she thought she heard a thump outside. It had been pretty windy out in the yard the past few nights so she shrugged it off as a tree branch bumping into the exterior of the cabin. Back in her bedroom, she changed into some clothes that were a bit more comfortable, picking out a pair of sweats and a cotton shirt that she wasn't sure belonged to her or Nate. The reporter always had a thing for wearing her partner's clothes and when she discovered that it was a turn on for him, she couldn't resist- even if it was a dirty old vault suit.

The man in question opened the door to their room when she was still in her underwear, tying her hair up behind her head.

“Oof, sorry!” He blinked, turning to walk back out.

“Blue?” She chuckled. “What? Can't stand the sight of me after all these years?”

He hid half between the door and the wall, peeking at her half-naked figure from around the side in a joking fashion.

“C'mere.” She cooed, beckoning him with a hand.

He ambled over and was met with both of her hands correcting the posture of his shoulders and then his jaw was angled down for a fast, though slightly wanton, kiss on the lips. Even in the state he was in, that undiscriminating primal part of him wanted her to go straight for his belt buckle with her fingers.

“Now let me get decent,” She rasped, with a wink, “and then we'll meet downstairs.”

“Damn.” He murmured, trying to dull his arousal when she had turned around.

“And fetch us a few Nuka's for the lockup will ya?”

~

The “lockup” wasn't a seedy cell underneath the family home at all but a storm cellar of which Nate used to build the foundation of the cabin over. Instead of turning it into a proper den, Nate and Piper used it to stockpile various things and for safely storing weapons. Nate liked to fashion it as the Silver Shroud's underground lair because, in Piper's opinion, he was a dork. The room was lined with a few workbenches and a neglected set of T-51 power armor. This wasn't an unusual custom for any other post-nuclear family.

Nate was unzipping a duffle bag on a bench when he heard Piper climbing down the hatch. Feeling his confidence return, the detective did his best Codsworth-as-bartender impression, “What can I get you, darling?” He one-handed a gauss rifle off it's stand as she came over, “This one is more full-bodied with some not-so-subtle notes of electromagnetic energy at the end.”

Piper snorted as she circled the workbench in the center of the room, carrying a brown hiking pack under one arm.

“Or can I interest you in the 1794?”

“Ooh, I wonder how that one tastes...” Piper deadpanned.

“I'd say it exceeds in portability but might be a tad explosive for your palate.” The Broadsider cannon. Typical.

“Meh, may as well just fish a Colt out for me, doll. One of the only things I like to keep discreet about is firepower.”

“Classy.” Nate mused, scratching his beard.

She dropped her pack on the uneven flooring and hopped onto a stool, resting her elbows on the tall wooden workbench. Nate took in that he hadn't noticed how exhausted she seemed since he'd been back, like something had been bothering her as well, keeping her awake at night, until now. Nate was moving around, packing rounds, cleaning his favorite hunting rifle with an oil-stained rag, and she looked like she was about to crash right there on the table. Maybe it was just that having a rambunctious seven year-old was taxing, but she'd done that before, much earlier in her life, and never complained. 

“Hey, you want me to crack you a Nuka-Cherry?” He rapped his knuckles on the wood, making her jolt awake.

“Hey-- sorry.”

“You're pretty tired.”

“Way to state the obvious.” She smirked as she stretched across for the bottle. “Thanks, doll. You seem a lot better.”

Nate flashed a grateful smile and then heaved another bag onto the table, the one he'd brought back from Vault 81, sifting through its contents until he produced an item wrapped in cloth. In turn, Piper slid off of the stool and rounded the other side of the bench to his side so she could have a closer look. The detective pulled back a corner of the protective fabric, revealing the murky interface of a slightly sized-down Pip-Boy.

Piper was impressed with the gadget but she immediately pressed her partner for more details.

“Look, I know Austin had us on a waiting list for this but after talking with him and telling him what we were about to do, he thought Miles should have it for the trip... to keep him occupied on the flight with something other than books and comics, y'know?”

“There's nothing wrong with being occupied with books, bottom line.” Piper replied in mock hurt.

“I know, I know. He's a better reader than I am at this point. It's just-- what I was thinking was that we could give it to him as soon as we touch down at the NCR base. McCarran, was it?”

“So it doesn't end up getting tossed from the Vertibird by a disgruntled father who's sick of hearing the electronic bolero from Red Menace for the umpteenth time. Good call.”

“Right?”

“This was an awfully sweet thing of Austin to do. I only wish we could wait another day so I could bolt down to 81 to thank him and, like, shower him with sweet rolls.” 

Nate could detect a hint of nontoxic jealousy in her tone. He could also sense this by the way she was inspecting the device, testing the straps to see if it would fit over her own wrist.

“Are you feeling left out, Pen-And-Paper?”

“No? What? No, no! You know how behind the times I am! I've never got any kicks from using Vault-Tec gizmos anyway. It's just--”

“You're experiencing technological peer pressure right now.”

“Technological whiplash is more like it.” Piper mumbled between sips of Nuka-Cherry.

“Hey,” Nate eased, pulling her into a side-hug and clinking their bottles together.

“It's just...”

He laughed, “You're getting cold feet about the Mojave again. I can feel it.”

“I dunno. I was just thinking a lot while we were coming back today. It's not too late for us to call the whole thing off...”

“Call it off?” He whined amusingly, shifting her into a full hug. 

“Yeah.” She breathed, inhaling his scent of fresh pine with the sourness of gunpowder. _Geez_ , she thought, _did Blue trip in the woods on his way to the Vault today?_

“Oh baby, but the honeymoon hasn't even begun and the suite's been paid up!” 

A sweet chuckle was let out against Nate's chest as he deepened the embrace, placing a soft kiss on her temple.

“No, I mean. I mean that there are a few options here, in the state, for you, as well. On the professional side of things, at least.”

“Mm?”

“I dunno, we could go talk to Dr. Amari and see what kind of treatment she suggests.”

“Oh wow, you're that quick to refer me for ECT!”

“Don't be a bastard, Blue. I know the memory loungers aren't fun but maybe going to talk to someone who at least knows their shit would help. At least those chairs won't fry your brains unless, I dunno... you have some weird fetish I don't know about?!”

“And what if I might?” He teased.

“Do you really want to relive your first fuck? Hell, even our first time? I don't think so. That's just... sad.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Oh please!” Piper pushed him away, blushing redder than a Brahmin. “You're unbelievable, Blue. I still can't believe you made that comment about us sleeping around at the Dugout to Nick! Oh wait, I can because I had to endure it!”

“Hey, even when things backfired and we ended up laughing like idiots, I was so turned on.”

When Nate had his fill of laughter at his flustered lover, he reverted back to their original discussion.

“See this is why I wanna take a chance on this thing, on the Mojave.”

“Elaborate.” Piper sighed, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I just feel like I'll be missing more if I start therapy, or whatever Amari coaxes me into doing--”

“She would never do that. Come on.”

“I've been away for too long. Emotionally. I just--” His head fell and Piper could hear her lover try to swallow a lump in his throat which was too much to take. “I'm so sorry.”

“Hey, hey, look at me.” She moved as quickly as she could and took both of his hands in hers. “I'm here.”

“I'm sorry.” He sputtered between sobs. “One second I'm laughing my head off and thinking, _'God, I missed this!'_ , and the next I'm just... fucked.”

“Nate, look at me,” She tilted his chin towards hers, “You're a lot of things, a shit disturber is one of 'em, but you are not fucked.”

“Miles... shit, he wouldn't even look at me when I put him to bed. He kept calling for you and then he just lost it. He should-- for how I've been to you.”

“Oh Blue,” She held him tighter, “Why didn't you come and get me?”

“I don't know. Caught in the moment. I thought about just giving him the Pip Boy then and there to cheer him up but--”

“No. Your son-- _our_ son thinks the world of you. Don't ever think otherwise.”

“You're giving me a break--”

“No, he's getting older, Nate, he's going to act out every now and then. Just... be there for him when he does. Let him know how much you love him.”

They held each other in silence until Piper listened for his pulse go back to normal as he held her head to his chest. “I'm so scared of losing everything if we're still going to do this, of not being able to come back. Is it even worth it?”

“The way I think...?” Nate trailed off, mulling his words over before continuing.

“The three of us will be together, as a family. You need to find Natalie. That's what it's worth. We'll find a way back somehow.”

“Blue,” She smiled, looking up into his face.

“Yeah?” Nate returned the favor, pressing his forehead against hers. 

“Dammit!” She faltered, feeling dizzy with the love she felt for him.

Too, going against Nick Valentine's advice seemed like the worst idea after all.

~

At the crack of dawn the following morning, the family of three set off on their hike to the rubble-packed streets of Concord where they'd rendezvous with the NCR pilot. Nate, who'd been unable to sleep a wink, was in a shaky state that even a cup of black coffee to-go failed to cure. He'd already lost his patience with Miles when he'd roused him from sleep to pack his things and the boy laid out a pile of socks, a single shirt and a pair of torn pajama pants, and an array of comic books and other reading material which happened to outweigh the essentials, and then refused to budge. Regrettably, he ended up having to bribe Miles with two, oh-so-nutritious Fancy Lads cakes for breakfast. Piper rose shortly after and managed to sneak a hot bath in with her morning smoke to aid with her pre-flight jitters. She crammed a couple extra packs of cigarettes from her stash with a fresh journal inside of her shoulder bag to be on the safe side. 

They were set to meet Peralta behind the church that was situated next to the Museum Of Freedom, but the way of getting there became a subject of debate between Nate and Piper. They could both agree that taking the civic access, a line of sewers that ran locally beneath the town, would be the safest bet in case there happened to be a handful of displaced Super Mutants or raiders wandering the open streets. The only issue was they differed on which of the other two sewer access grates lead them nearest to the church.

“It's the one up on that catwalk, I swear! Dammit!” Nate griped as his Pip-Boy map screen glitched and flickered again. The detective had only discovered until recently that his Mark IV model didn't fare so well underground anymore. The annoyance of blue screens left him internally kicking himself at not bringing it to Calvin, Vault 81's resident repairman, for a tune-up the day before.

“That's worth a cap, Daddy.” Miles notified his father, ducking under the top railing on a short catwalk above his parents and holding out his “swear purse”. Nate fished around in the pockets of his padded jacket with his free hand while he waited for the Pip-Boy to reboot.

“Bud, it looks like you're gonna make a killing today, huh?” Piper said.

“Yeah! Mom! Radroach!” Miles pointed down the passage they had just came from where Piper could spot the pest skittering on the walkway towards them.

“Got it.” Piper unsheathed the pistol in her waistband and lined up the shot just below where she could see the creature's antennae flailing about in the shadows. Fortunately, before she could fire the roach ran off course and slipped into the main of sewage that flowed between both parties.

Miles erupted into a fit of laughter at the sight, “Didja see that? Didja see that?”

“That solves that.” Piper huffed with a grin as she put the gun away. “Any luck, Blue?”

“Psh, I don't even think the local map knows we're under Concord.”

“Well, my bet's still on the manhole back where those six-legged jerks are hanging out. You say a Deathclaw busted out of one of those grates way back when? I'll wager that one of those brutes would hardly be able to stick his nose through the one up ahead.”

“Point taken.” Nate sighed. “Just think of all the stupid things your dad would've done if this one wasn't around, scout.”

“Oh, come on!” Piper objected to the flattery as she lowered Miles from the catwalk. “Let's get out of here. I think I'm getting a bad kind of high off of these fumes.”

~

Piper's projections had been correct after all as the family ascended from a manhole across the street from the Museum Of Freedom. A shudder hit Nate every time he passed by the old town in flashes of red from Minutemen laser muskets and of Dogmeat's contentious bark behind him as the one-time vault dweller turned to see a Deathclaw tear a raider's flesh from limb down the street. He felt his lungs unclench as they rose to find the streets completely empty save for a man in uniform enjoying instant breakfast on the Museum steps.

“Hey, guys! Shit, let me help you with your stuff!” Peralta fumbled with his travel utensils, knocking his thermos down the steps, as he rushed over to assist the family with their gear. “My 'Bird's just around back. Boy, am I happy that you guys are actually gonna come along! You must be Miles. I've heard a lot about you, kiddo!”

As Randy broke the ice with their son, Nate and Piper gave each other suspicious looks as if they were asking whether the pilot was bluffing or whether they told him other things than Miles' name.

“Ooh! Firepower.” Randy chuckled nervously, taking the duffle bag packed with Nate's hunting rifle and twin revolvers.

Nate looked expectantly at the pilot as if they were about to be scolded for bringing weapons onto an NCR aircraft. They were taking a chance that they'd get the go-ahead anyway since it was pretty well impossible to read into NCR customs prior. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Of course!” Randy coughed. “These guys will just have to be inspected by one of my superiors on the base, that's all. Shall we?”

“Yay, I love a patdown!” Piper deadpanned, out of the pilot's earshot, aside to Nate as they fell behind trailing the young man and Miles through the dense grass growing wildly between the museum and the church.

“I know- Ow!” Nate was met with a sharp elbow in the ribs.

“When one gets older does everything their partner says have to be immediately taken to be purely carnal or what?” Piper wondered out loud, giddy to see her lover's more playful side return.

“You should write an article about that. I'd happily be the subject.” Nate answered as his partner went on ahead.

“Glad to have you back, Blue!” 

~

“Cool!”

Around the corner, and before either parent could tell him otherwise, Miles bounded towards the aircraft to inspect the yellow NCR bear insignia painted onto its nose. 

“Sorry, it's his first time seeing something like this up close.” Nate explained.

Peralta waved the couple off, “It's okay, guys, he's just excited. I understand. Hey, what do you think, big guy?”

While the pilot humored their son, Nate and Piper loaded their bags into the cargo hatch under the machine's tail boom. “I'll give him an hour to get stir-crazy or sick all over the place.” 

“Hey! I thought you were the one who wanted this so badly?”

“I'm just saying.” Nate grumbled.

“Five hours straight with you, anywhere, is enough of an aversion.” Piper winked. “Cheer up, grumps.”

Peralta's Vertibird wasn't dissimilar from the Brotherhood crafts that the Commonwealth had once been accustomed to. The only feature that was starkly missing was the mounted chain gun on the side that usually would've been manned by a Paladin or lesser. 

The weight of this decision to leave, to explore an unknown wasteland to his own knowledge, didn't hit Nate until he was strapped onto the passenger bench inside of the cabin and the NCR pilot was making his final safety checks around the aircraft. He was in the middle between Piper and Miles as they fitted their protective military headsets over their ears. His girlfriend: the most uncertain of all, but driven by the hope that she'd be able to help him heal and make contact with her sister. His son: fearless, unyielding, asking how high up the Vertibird was going to reach in the air. _Not too high._ Nate replied. _WHAT?_ The boy shouted over the scream of the wings descending into flight mode. _Not too high._

The detective loosened a few buttons from the top of his collared shirt and cracked a can of purified water from his carry on bag, taking a long gulp as the heat drained from his face.

“Haha! Be careful with those! We're not set to land at Camp McCarran until thirteen hundred hours!” Randy warned as he put his helmet on and climbed into the cockpit.

_Five hours._ Nate drew in a jagged intake of breath. _A little over five hours._

Every time he closed his eyes, as the rotors whirred outside of the craft, it got him thinking about Shanghai.

And just then, as if she could feel him getting tensed up right next to her, Piper hooked an arm under his elbow and wound her hand around his with a squeeze.

“Hey, is the shape of this thing what a pet goldfish looked like?”

“Yeah,” He exhaled, shakily, before laughing at the lovely randomness of her question. It was a great tonic to shoot his nervousness, even if for a moment.

“Thought so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheesy jabs and fluffy cuteness ensues... with maybe some hints of some *relief* to come?? ;)
> 
> I'd like to apologize for taking August off! I really, really wanted to get this chapter out there but wasn't sure where to cut it before the 'fun' stuff begins *diabolical laughter* ! It is with great relief that I am able to tell you that part two will be coming a lot sooner than I planned if all goes well.
> 
> Thanks for reading as always ❤


	6. I Can Never Go Home Anymore (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An episode where Piper makes friends with the wily NCR pilot after nearly getting sucked into the Divide ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ROUND TWO.... FIGHT!!!

Piper wondered why she felt it a good idea to be well-rested ahead of five hours cooped up in a flying eggbeater. Nate and Miles internal clocks were clearly ahead of the curve for this and by the middle of the second hour, they'd nodded off on the cramped bench they were belted onto, and with this added discomfort, sleep seemed like it would never come to Piper no matter how long she kept her eyes shut.

“Hey, how's it going back there?” Peralta said.

“Oh, fine. I just wish I could get some shut-eye to pass the time.”

“I can see it wasn't so hard for Nate and your son.”

“Yeah. I'm sorta jealous.”

“Well, if you want some company you're welcome to come on up if you'd like.” He motioned to the extra pilot's chair beside his own. Peralta had been nothing but hospitable since take-off, but she couldn't help but place bets in her own head whether he would try to hit on her based on his giddy-eyed expression in the flight mirror.

“Thanks. I was just about to pull out something to read, actually.” She said.

“Alright, well, enjoy!”

True, the journalist had brought along a few books from her personal collection, not fully knowing what being a traveler and guest of the New California Republic entailed. There was one book called _Wise Blood_ ; from the literary dustbowl of dark pre-war social and religious critiques set in derelict rural communities. It was books from this era that Piper had gotten fascinated with the last time she'd gotten lost in the Boston Public Library on purpose. She found that the genre was able to reflect her world in a way that other pre-war books of the same era couldn't. The journalist was finding it hard to get this one started, though, as the movements and jerks of the Vertibird got to her head to the point where she found herself unable to read a sentence without losing steam. It didn't help that the first chapter opened with the central character cooped up in a train car either.

“It's not much but I think we're just south of Great Bend. If you want to crack the door to have a look, you're more than welcome. I saw a huge fire over there at the steelworks a few days ago.”

“You sure?” Getting some fresh air wasn't a bad prospect.

“Yes, have a look! Just try to stand back as it opens.”

The journalist unbuckled the safety belt and stepped carefully over to the Vertibird's flank. The release gave easily under her hand, sliding automatically the rest of the way on the interior side. She steadied herself by gripping onto a bar above her head as she stood on the threshold of a land once known as Missouri. Largely dried up river beds cut through the plains and through to the north where she could spy a cluster of factories and other strongholds in the distance. With weak knees and a whistling in her ears, she watched from the spot for a few minutes before the dose of adrenaline wore off and fear settled in her gut. Once, she had thought that ascending into the upper-Upper Stands of Diamond City in her youth to spy on no-gooders provided an easy rush but this was something else entirely. It was a view she could actually get used to. 

Once that queasy feeling had taken over, though, she had to move back into the cabin to keep herself from getting sick all over the sleek deck of the aircraft. Accordingly, she eventually took up the pilot's offer and joined him in the cockpit. 

After her first and second encounters with Peralta, she thought she could whittle him down to being an aloof military brat, who'd probably grown up knowing very little about the world outside of his NCR bubble. It was just a passing judgment, given that Piper was largely unfamiliar with the Republic save for the echoes of a few strung-out nomads she'd encountered in her youth. Those long-winded tales could have just as easily been fables, too. At least now she had time to pick Peralta's brain if she wanted. And best of all he seemed to have mellowed out now that they'd been safely cruising for the past hundred miles.

“How about that view, huh? I know the altitude is not that great but--”

“No, no! That was a sight for sure.”

A wide grin spread across the pilot's face, noticeably pleased with his work, and if he wasn't wearing the dumb helmet, Piper thought the expression made him look like he was a goofy teen, much too young to be a Vertibird jockey.

“So you weren't pulling my leg when you said that there are folks where you come from who have read my work, right?”

“No ma'am,” he said. “I mean all things come around eventually, right? Our, uh, representative on the Strip actually had a copy of your issue on the Prydwen bombing of 2287 on his desk when I had my briefing. And other people have read 'em, I'm sure. Those who can... Read, I suppose.”

“ _That is so wild._ ”

“Probably been some reproductions too.”

“The sister I mentioned the other day... she was my right-hand at the paper. She took a few issues when she left. Maybe our five biggest hits at most. Never thought they'd catch on, though. Not once. It'd be amazing to think that other people did the same though.”

“Yeah?" He said, as if he hadn't really been listening. “Yeah, well, like I said, we have pretty comprehensive courier services out West.”

“Hey, do you happen to know how far off a place called New Reno is from where we're headed?”

“Yes, ma'am. But you'd have to go a ways past a sizable mountain range to get there. It's not controlled by NCR. It's a pretty seedy place. Why d'you ask?”

“That's where my sister was headed. It was the last I heard when she hopped on one of these things, at least.”

“Uh, Natalie, you said?”

“Yeah, look, I know it's rude to even ask, but what would you say is the probability of one of your bigwigs letting me find a way up there when we're done with the whole tour of New Vegas?”

“Um,” he cleared his throat, “Yeah, I don't know about that, ma'am. The best we might be able to do is make a call.”

“Make a call?”

“Sure. Our capital, Shady Sands, isn't far off from New Reno. We'd have to get permission from the brass up there to transport you and your family over to their post.”

From where they sat at the front of the aircraft, Piper could now see the horizon stretching out ahead and to a spot where the pale sky seemed to be burning.

“So,” Randy started, trying the liven the conversation again, “I guess you're close with your sister?”

The journalist had to suppress a laugh, “You have no idea. Letting her go was one of the toughest things I've had to do.”

“Yeah?”

“There's fourteen years between us. I taught her how to walk, talk, and, I hope, how to be as least of an asshole in this life as possible. Hey, should we be worried about that spot up ahead?”

He'd been too focused on the geography close to the route that the pilot didn't take notice of the dim meteorological conditions ahead. He changed course with ease, intending to make an arc through unmarked territory and upwards to the Mojave from the south-west rather than the north. Still, a mixed feeling of hope and dread felled him. He could only pray that luck was on their side if his conclusions were true.

On the other hand, the journalist from the Commonwealth had no idea what they were in for in many ways, on the many sides of the dice. She could see how focused Peralta had become but she was practically blind to his true nature and inexperience. Maybe he was lucky in the sense that he was just very good at bluffing.

During the next hours of calm, Piper learned that Private Peralta was twenty-four, grew up in a mining town along the I-15 where he cut his teeth sneaking in caves, had a pet molerat, and gave up a life of hard labor and lung infections to join the NCR's armed forces when he came of age. He didn't gamble like his comrades did, he never smoked, and lost a fraction of his tiny crush on the journalist when she lit one up in the cockpit. Except, he couldn't say that he disliked the way her voice got huskier with every drag she took. He was practically _praying_ at this point that he could get them safely to ground.

Confirming his worst fears, the air began to thicken just under an hour outside of their destination. Piper noticed it, too, but was taken aback by how still and contained it was, long-ruling out a radstorm. The divisions of windshields became pocked with dust until the resistance as they moved couldn't clear the gunk off fast enough.

“Shit.”

“We're sailing straight into that stuff, aren't we?”

The young pilot's complexion began to pale as the barrier grew closer and closer. Smoke. It was smoke. And a collective of violent storms stirring below them.

“Randy! Come on!” She jabbed him in the shoulder with her elbow roughly. “You're gonna get us through _alive_ , aren't you?”

“The door in the cab is still open, right?”

“Shit!” Piper swore as she bounded out of her seat, realizing that the cabin where Nate and Miles were snoozing could be filled with noxious smoke in a matter of minutes. She stumbled through the small aisle between the seats in the cockpit, making a beeline for the red release handle on the side of the mechanism.

“You better get that thing shut unless you want them to get their lungs full of this stuff!” Peralta hollered behind him, over the thrum of the motor.

“I'm trying, asshole!”

The damn thing wouldn't budge at the speed they were going at. Piper's first two tries to get the door across was scored with her profuse swearing and the blasts full of dirt, and who knows what else, flying onto the floor of the cabin. On the last push, she put her whole weight into it, trying to ignore the fact that if she made one bad slip, she could be sent free diving out of the aircraft to her demise. As the door ran on its track across with her, Piper couldn't quite hold on to the handle as it closed with force. Her body slammed into the wall adjacent as the mechanism locked in place, shielding the party of four from the clouds of dust looming outside.

Peralta heard the crash, which hardly interrupted him from his racing thoughts and projections, “Y'okay back there?”

“Shit. Yeah.” Piper said, nursing her arm after the impact as she straightened herself on her feet again. “I've felt worse.” 

Nate and Miles were still out like two lights on the bench, the latter's head resting on his father's lap, with Nate's fingers from one hand splayed through his son's hair. They didn't seem to have been stirred by the crashing of the door a few feet from where they were buckled in. Piper stepped carefully over to them, admiring how they could both nap so peacefully amid potential chaos in the waking world. Images flooded the journalist's mind, memories of when Miles was just a fussy newborn and Nate would lie on his back on the couch, or anywhere really, with him on his chest, just breathing in and out, pretending to be napping so the sleepless boy would rest. Or Piper waking up, tangled in warm sheets, to this happening and never wanting it to fade as she snuggled up against them.

Her visions of the midwest hours before were suddenly nightmarish. She was panicking, but that was a given, as any parent would when fearing the safety and livelihood of her family. Maybe just looking at them, the two guys who mattered most and who she would do anything to protect, was making the shakiness in her vision and limbs worse, but the memory helped her to remember to breathe. In and out.

There was no longer any influx of fresh air into the cabin.

“Up here!”

The journalist grabbed the back of the plush seat as she hoisted herself back into spot next to the pilot, frowning as she pressed against the pain in her arm. “What now?”

“Did y'have to call me an asshole?” Peralta brooded.

“I'm sorry. Tensions were kinda high!” She threw her hands up. “Now what are we gonna do to fight the probability that we might die in this mess?”

“We're not. I got this.”

Piper turned her body and squinted at him from her seat. “Are you kidding me? That's the impression I got from you last time and look what happened!”

“I just needed you to close the cabin off before my 'Bird got filled with sand, ma'am.” He added, seriously.

“You're kidding...” 

“Just be quiet and we'll get through this.”

“Are all of the other soldier boys as cocky as you are or--?”

And with that, Peralta lost his New Californian cool.

“Look, do you want to get through to the Mojave safely or do you wanna keep talking out of your--” The pilot paused as he caught the expression on her face, recalling that he'd neglected to get her or Nate to hand over any concealable weapons they might be carrying on their person. If looks could annihilate...

“Out of my what, Randy?” 

The pilot remained silent and red-faced. 

“That's what I thought.” Piper said. She wasn't just about to let anyone talk to her like that. Ever. And sure enough, when she careened in her seat to look through the glass her jacket lifted and he was positive that he'd seen a flash of a pistol flush against her back, sitting desirably in her waistband.

“What is _this_ , around us, anyway?” 

“It's the Divide.”

“And just what the hell is the Divide, Randy?” She pressed, her voice lilted in anxiousness as she uttered the pilot's name.

“You...” Peralta pursed his lips as his grip tightened on the controller. “You don't wanna know.”

In an instant, Piper wished that she had brought her camera with her into the cockpit, or rather that she hadn't buried it in the depths of her duffle bag. They were cruising directly into the wall of smoke, but dark shapes and structures could still be seen below when the journalist pressed her cheek against the glass. The next moment, nothing could be seen around them.

Piper settled in her seat and peered at the pilot's empty forward-stare again, “Try me.”

“You don't...”

“What, will you get forty whacks from the general for telling a petty journalist about it? Is it some horrifically bogus U.S. Government secret from the days of yore?”

“Maybe and yes, ma'am, but I trust that you'll be able to figure it out. No one goes in or out of there... on foot, at least. Keep watch while I get us through here.”

The dark objects appeared through the thick of the smoke again as the Vertibird rumbled on. Piper watched from her seat, intensely, as they flew over one, a big one. She felt a chill pierce her spine when she made out that they were cruising over a scatter of warheads. A graveyard of nuclear _warheads_. Their red tips flashed under the afternoon sun, like blemishes in the earth.

“I wonder who made those ugly nukes, huh?”

“Hopeville. They called the base Hopeville. Dunno if they manufactured them down there, though.”

“Hopeville, huh?” Piper mused. “How charming.”

Randy snorted, “No shit!”

“No shit.” Piper echoed, concurring with the pilot. “That's it, kid.”

“If I may... the place gave me the fucking creeps when some of my boys used to trade stories about it in the mess hall. All rumours, y'know, but still creepy as hell. They say that the land has just been ravaged over the years by the storms and seismic shifts of the earth.” 

“Guy told me that he met this crazy old man who'd been, in my fine opinion, _stupid_ enough to venture there, to the Divide. His skin had been peeled off from the storms cause he'd hung around for too long. Not a ghoul, this old guy's skin was just... gone!”

“Grim stuff. You ever hear about a place called the Glowing Sea before they sent you over to get us?”

Randy cleared his throat. “No, what's that?”

“A soft-core iteration of this Divide you speak of.”

“I'm intrigued.”

“It's just a swarm of radiation holding an entire territory to the south of Boston. Made a lot of stupid decisions going on excursions there when I was around your age. I always figured it wasn't the only phenomenon of its kind in the country.”

“Damn. You ever, I dunno... think about how places like these might have looked in their heyday? Before everything?”

“Before a bunch of A-bombs tore the land to shreds? Sure. Who doesn't?” Piper shivered. “Though could you imagine living, _knowing_ there were nukes in your backyard? It makes raising a family around frag mines seem kinda cute.”

“We're almost through, if I remember correctly. I'm sorry for causing alarm.”

“Hey, at least there was no real turbulence. I do not do turbulence.” _Especially if it's some dumb Nuka Cola Galaxy Rocket bullshit,_ she reminisced. “And I'll make sure to tell your boss or supervisor or whatever joe that you're one hell of a pilot and cross-country escort.”

Peralta felt a bit guilty and something more. The weight of what was probably going to transpire on the airfield when they landed left him feeling helpless and afraid in a way that a place like the Divide couldn't distill. But a whole society he'd devoted his life to? God, the kid better be for real...

"Look Piper, I should probably tell you--"

"No, hey. Save it for when we land safely on the tarmac for you to profess your love for me in front of my family." She teased.

He hesitated, unable to muster a reply, but was glad that he didn't.

~

“Wait, what did I miss?” Nate mumbled groggily as Piper tangled her arms around his neck.

“Just about everything. We almost got screwed by a little slice of hell called the Divide but it looks like we're gonna touch down in New Vegas alive.”

They were on the home stretch now. Ten minutes tops before landing at Camp McCarran. Miles had been stirred awake and led to the cockpit where he could see the Hoover Dam as they passed over.

“Damn,” Nate yawned, “I don't know what got into me. Did you slip me something after take off?”

“Psh, no. Would've saved some for myself if I did, doll. You feeling any better though?”

“Yeah. When's dinner? I'm bloody famished.”

“Really?” She giggled. “Sleep and food. That's the classic Blue I love.”

~

Nate first noticed something was horribly wrong when he saw the man in NCR fatigues waving their Vertibird off vigorously as it began to lower onto the empty airfield. From the concourse entry across the hot tarmac, a group of around eight to ten armed officers came running forth among the skeletons of pre-war fighter jets. As the aircraft buckled to the ground, the wings folded upwards out of hover mode, and the family of three watched in bafflement as Private Peralta assumed a position of surrender with his head on the dash of the console.

“Do everything they say.” The pilot whimpered amid profuse apologies.

Six of the officers swarmed the Vertibird on all sides while the two most decorated and brutish entered the cabin, shouting a mess of orders for the passengers to stay put or else they'd be put down. Nate leaned forward so we could see out of the front window surrounding the cockpit. Yeah, they were _supposedly_ in the right place, alright. 'Cause there was that two-headed bear blowing proud above them.

Was the base not alerted that they were coming? Was the pilot not who he said he was? Without another word from the officers in the cabin, Peralta was dragged and hauled out of the aircraft despite remaining passive and not showing any signs of becoming violent. The visitors were led off by the squad shortly after, stunned and desperate for an explanation.

And when it came down to the dirt of it all, it occurred to Nate that these officers were just as starving for answers as they were.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a writer of my word for once, lol! Two chapters in six days is a record I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to repeat for DTOTB but I'm just having a lot of fun writing it so who knows??? Thanks for the kudos, comments, and reads ❤ I'm going to get around to doing those three myself (send me good Fallout stories plsss)


	7. It's A Free Wasteland!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Piper comes face to face with the one who got her in this mess: her sister Nat. While the NCR has to deal with the headache that has taken the form of the Wright sisters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back & things are heatin' up plot-wise!
> 
> I feel the need to mention that sexual assault takes place in this chapter. Just a warning before you read.

Perhaps one would think that after fifteen years as commanding officer of policing at Camp McCarran and the NCR's embassy on the New Vegas Strip, First Lieutenant Carrie Boyd would have seen it all. But when one of her officers defected and stole an in-commission military aircraft she never expected to see him return with hostages to boot. 

Hostages. A family of three all the way from the Commonwealth no less. It didn't matter how many times they insisted that they went with Peralta's plan by choice, in the relay of information being passed along from the soldiers who had detained the family at McCarran, it was suspicious within itself to fill in the report that they were something otherwise. It was just a terrible chance of bad luck and confusion, and they unfortunately happened to get mislead by an officer whose future in the military was beginning to look finite.

That was the gist of the NCR's “unofficial apology” to the family at least, but not the swift bookend to their situation.

The missing piece was a name: the surname of the woman in the group, a journalist whose work had fallen under more than a few pairs of eyes on the base in recent times. The name, too, synonymous with a particularly muddy part of the NCR's history, once upon a time on the west coast. In her experience, Boyd had developed a fast hunch when things were seeming far from coincidental. Everything was starting to make the most sense that it could in the early stages of two, individual investigations. Peralta brought the family for a reason, and it was looking like the kid they had in custody had somehow orchestrated the whole thing. Even more troubling, it was now plain that she'd been recruiting Boyd's troops for her own disposal, with Private Peralta acting as the first shining example.

From her office at the Embassy, Boyd was anticipating the family's arrival, of which they were being escorted over on the monorail from McCarran. Doubly so eager to find out whether this Piper Wright's relations to a certain Nat Wright were legitimate before whispers of a scandal began to travel from post to post. Until that time came though, Boyd would have to settle with getting interrupted by opening doors as other little fires began to start beyond the Strip.

“Uh, Lieutenant?” Officer Runnels, the Embassy's resident busybody, poked his big, sweaty head through the crack in the doorway.

“What is it this time, Runnels?” Boyd answered, not looking up from her paperwork.

“I'm awful sorry to bother you, ma'am, but we just got wind of a situation in Primm.”

“And?” Boyd said. “You can come on in, I don't bite.”

“Ma'am,” Runnels nodded and stepped just inside with his back to the door, “Captain Hayes called and there was another scuffle at NCRCF this afternoon.”

“What do you mean by a 'scuffle'? Are there any casualties?”

“None that I know of, Miss, I mean-- Ma'am! Hayes said that Beneventi managed to get away but that's all...”

“Claudio Beneventi? Shit!” Lieutenant Boyd was never known for outbursts or cracking under pressure, but she couldn't help but pound a fist on the table in frustration at this news. It had taken her months to track and take that asshole down. “Runnels, you're dismissed!”

“I know he has ties to the Omerta guy you--”

Runnels was hit in the back with the door as Ambassador Dennis Crocker was next to bumble into Boyd's office. “Oh, was someone behind there? My apologies. May I have a word, Lieutenant Boyd?”

“Ow-- do you want me to contact Hayes for confirmation on the runner, ma'am?”

“Dismissed, Runnels! I can only have faith that Hayes knows what he's doing.”

The officer went away sheepishly, leaving his superior to have a moment with a particularly smug looking ambassador.

“I hope there isn't too much on your plate now, Miss Boyd.”

“It's fine.” She massaged her temples with her fingers. “What can I help you with?”

The elderly man, who didn't go a day without being dressed to the nines in one of his various puke-brown tailored suits, shut the door carefully behind him and shuffled into one of the chairs in front of Boyd's desk. “How many years has it been now? Has it been over a decade since the bright and terribly spunky Carrie Boyd joined our midst?”

“Fifteen years.” She chuckled. “Can hardly believe it myself.”

“And look at you now, succeeding Maria Pappas! My, I can remember your first interrogation as a young member of the MP. You hadn't a clue at that time, because of the one-way mirror, but President Kimball had been visiting and you happened to be on duty as I was touring him through McCarran. Everyone-- all who had observed you that day were impressed. You never had to lay a finger on your perp, to get them to talk, and that was a feat many before you had failed to be able to do before your time.”

“Gee, Crocker,” she said, “That's very flattering and true and all but, please, you're gonna make me gag on all of the nostalgia. What do you want?”

The ambassador pursed his lips, his thick mustache made him look like he could be the last living walrus. “As you know, the sister is on her way over now with her family. I know that Mister Peralta hasn't talked yet but I can only guess that it will be a quick confirmation that the relation is correct. I also know that it is your field to bargain with our captures if necessary. Understand that I'm not trying to undermine you... I'd just like to have a talk with the two girls, face-to-face.”

“I don't know--” Boyd shook her head.

“Think of it as me taking a bit of a load off of your back, Hsu's busy with other matters after all. I'd like to work out a deal with the two of them, maybe they can even help us with our _pest_ problem here on the Strip.”

“I'm not releasing the kid for ten minutes if that's what you're inferring... think about that for a moment!”

“Please, my dear. Don't pretend like she's all the way over at the correctional facility near Primm! And come to think of it, they're not faring so well are they?”

“I'll think about it, okay?”

“She's not violent, is she? She knows too much, yes, but—”

“I said I'll think about it.” Boyd interrupted, firmly. She was starting to feel as if this was her punishment, this was the beginning of the end of her career as she would be forced to retire or worse, for reasons that she believed were completely out of her control. A string of bad luck.

With some difficulty, Crocker pulled one of his legs over the other as he lazed in the chair.

“Fine, okay? Fine!” Boyd slammed her binder of records shut.

“That was quick!”

“Just,” she exhaled, “keep me in the loop, alright? That's an order. I get to do the debriefing, for whatever you settle on, and I'll handle the rest of the arrangements going forward, got it?”

“Deal! Deal!” Crocker stood up, albeit a bit too quickly and nearing spilled over the table in a effort to shake the Lieutenant's hand. 

“I have to call the officer on-duty across the way, which should take some time because the last I heard the kid was moved to solitary.”

“I thought she wasn't violent?” 

“She's not, but...” Boyd picked up the receiver as she prepared to send a message to the police headquarters across the square from the Embassy. 

“But?”

“She made another mess.”

“Well... don't keep me waiting!” Crocker said as he left for his own office.

~

The only thing that seemed to have brightened Miles' mood was the ride on the monorail. Even though there were a bunch of intimidating soldiers around, he felt safe with his parents. The steady flow of tears after the incident on the Vertibird had faded to a few sniffles and the occasional whimper as he saw the desert, for the first time, flicker by outside.

The day was nearly gone though. They'd been held for a couple of hours inside McCarran airport, questioned, but received few answers back in their favor. Few positive words, save for the aforementioned “apology”, had been exchanged. There was a feeling in Nate's gut, a bad one, after the questions began to zero in on Piper. It wasn't the first time the detective had been interrogated, nor was it the first time for her, he could be sure. And it seemed, if Peralta hadn't lied about one thing, it was that they were “aware” (in their own words) of Piper Wright.

Off the train, they were escorted down the steps of the LVB station. The assault on the senses that were the towering casinos and haunts of New Vegas was stifling. The wash of neon lights, the sounds, the smells, which Nate and Piper had thought would be experienced in a much different situation, weren't fully realized as they were rushed down the boulevard towards a cluster of buildings at the very end of the Strip. It was nearing after-hours for civilians to enter the Embassy plaza where, by the entrance, another NCR flag lay limp against its mast as the evening grew still. 

~

Nat Wright had been in the Shoe for long enough that the dark had begun to impose grainy pictures before her eyes. Maybe it was the blow to the temple she'd taken from the butt of a rifle finally at play, scrambling her brains around as the shock wore off. More shocking and, frankly, painful was the unit's door opening for her collection after the first few hours.

“Shit, dudes, my head-trip in there was just about to start!” She groaned she was hoisted up by an officer by her armpits. Another one was there, Ruiz, whom Nat recognized by his labored breathing as he groped her in the doorway of the cell.

“Did you guys manage to get the shitter unclogged?” She was referring to the fiasco with a drunk a few days back. A guy who had a meltdown when she was still being kept in general population. Some screw-up had let the drunk in before stripping the switchblade from his boot, started waving it around in there, so Nat handled it the only way she thought necessary before someone got seriously hurt: by stuffing their face into the communal toilet bowl.

“Quiet, _puta_. Crocker wants to see you so I gotta get a feel while I can.”

Ruiz was the one who retaliated Nat's move with the rifle clubbing. A textbook personification of the exact kind of macho and bloodthirsty neanderthal she'd come to know and hate in the NCR. Hated women more than he pretended to worship them. 

“Protocol. Best you struggle so I can get in there.”

Nat kept her eyes closed as the asthmatic officer's hand quickly did away with the button on her jeans and dove in between her bare thighs. Officer Hammon, the silent one who held her tightly against his front, clamped a clammy palm over her mouth in case she decided to scream.

“Loosen up, chica. What... you got something up there?”

Nat swung her head to the side, briefly losing Hammon's hold over her mouth for a split second. “Jesse will cut your balls off I swear to go--” 

“Officer Reyes? He been your fuck-boy this whole time?” Ruiz let out a guttural laugh and moved in close to her ear, letting his thick stubble brush her cheek. “Reyes won't do shit.”

“Reyes won't do _shit_.” Hammon echoed, laughing in her other ear.

Ruiz gleamed at his partner before copping a quick and rough squeeze of Nat, panties and all. She almost fell to her knees as she fussed about. “You know what, brother? This is taking too fucking long.”

“Beats me, Trey.”

“Should get her to Crocker, pronto, before she starts thinking about snitching, eh?” The officer traced her round jawline with his fingertips.

Hammon released her mouth and she looked away, back towards the dark of the cell and certainly away from Ruiz's cold stare. His fingers burned hot on her pallid skin.

“Eh?” 

“Fuck you.”

Her beginnings in New Reno had made Goodneighbor back in the C.W. seem about as innocent as a petting zoo but this... this was something else. When they let go, they left her skin crawling with millions and billions of tiny insects from head to toe. Their fraternal laughing and joking as they ignored her and went back to business, leading her out of the empty block, made her feel as if she'd get violently ill all over the chipped linoleum; rounding a corner to heckle their buddies on watch by the cells in general population. The ache grew and grew... until she had to displace the feeling with her own strength and sense of humor. 

One day soon these two assholes would pay. Like hell, they'd pay.

~

Dennis Crocker always got what he wanted. As Kimball's most trusted, favorite ambassador he'd served at the Embassy longer than just about anyone stationed on the Strip. Seen his share of fuckery, too. It wasn't the first time someone had broken into the control tower at McCarran and had enough know-how to tune to an enemy broadcasting band, long thought to be dead, and stir things up with what had been communicated. What was startling, though, was the fact that this was a non-citizen, a free-spirited youngster, who'd done so, with no apparent ties to the Republic's history or cause.

Peralta looked like the perfect accomplice on paper, too. He had one agenda: to ease his comrades' fears about an old enemy of the Republic's supposed resurgence. Nat must have had her own as well but hadn't fessed up yet. Two new friends, from different worlds, helping each other out. The only problem was Crocker had _no way_ of proving that the young woman was who she said she was, or where her true allegiances may lie.

But here was a key to this madness conveniently sitting right across from Crocker. A woman named Piper, the pilot's captive, who claimed rightly to be Natalie Wright's sister from the Commonwealth. It seemed quite plain to him that this was a tactic of Nat's to aid in her release, a way out of a mess of her own making: bring the reputable journalist sister here, get out as quickly as possible.

To the Ambassador's subdued delight, on the contrary, the sister wasn't having _any_ of it. She was furious. She and her husband had been horribly duped and, as Crocker understood, their young son was in hysterics in the lobby, reeling from the whole ordeal. The ambassador could sense this fury, a mother's blood boiling over her family being dragged into it as well. Maybe Piper could prove more reliable to him than to Nat in the long run.

“Now I don't know what your sister expects us to do, Miss Wright. Pardon her, perhaps? As you can imagine she put Camp McCarran at risk for a massive breach in intelligence by finding that wave--”

“I thought you just said that the line had been dead for years, though.”

“Not dead!” He waved his hand for her to keep her voice down.

“Then what was it doing? _Hibernating_?” She stifled a laugh. “I think I need to know more about the people who were trying to hijack your communications before I understand any of this...”

“My dear, I love sharing the history of our great Republic more than most, all of our victories and our faults, but we simply do not have the time to discuss that for your personal understanding now. Just know that we continue to be the peace-keepers, the movers and shakers, and always have been.”

“Well, I don't know if you're doing a very good job so far, sir.” She winked.

“You're a journalist. A damn good one I must say. You must understand the integrity, erm, the _grit_ it takes to sometimes hold off on information until the right time?”

“I'm not following you, I have to admit.” Piper said. “I can follow that we come from two, scarcely similar places. In other words, people have told me that I don't have a filter. Does that answer your question?”

The ambassador patted his face with a hankerchief he produced from his breast pocket, laughing lowly at the absurdity of this situation. The Commonwealth: lawlessness, shanty towns, decay, and gutter people. It was probably all true. The sheer volumes of radiation that had seeped into the soil there had begun to affect evolution! “But you _must_ understand that--”

The interruption of a rap on the door signified that Nat had arrived. Crocker recognized the officers, Wesley Hammon and Trey Ruiz, leading her in. The former Crocker knew was generally well-liked everywhere he went. He had lunch in the break room with the officer a few times a week and learned he took care of his grandparents on his off weekends, brought the aging ambassador a mean minced-Brahmin pie once. Delightful kid. He was really going places, Crocker imagined.

“Hiya Sis!” Nat said with a smug grin.

Piper turned in her chair but didn't say a word. Instead she eyed her younger sister astutely, trying to decide if she wanted to hug her and then wring her neck or vice versa. Someone had already given her a shiner around her left eye. She was taken aback by how run down Nat looked, though. It showed in the purple shadows on the skin under her eyes, bruising aside. “Do you mind if I light up in here, Denny?”

The Ambassador cleared his throat, “Please, it's only Dennis. Normally I don't allow any smoking in the vicinity unless--”

“Great.” Piper interjected as she thumbed her lighter, cigarette ready at her lips.

Crocker cleared his throat disapprovingly. “Unless you deem it completely necessary.”

“You have an ashtray right there on your desk.” Piper deadpanned, hearing the rattle of handcuffs clinking behind her.

“The legend goes that my sis here became a smoker the night I was born.” Nat said.

Piper snorted. “You sure aren't bluffing with that.”

The Ambassador raised his eyebrows, doing a pretty weak job at seeming interested in the play of the two reunited sisters.

“Will you need us to stand by while you conduct your proceedings, Mr. Crocker?” Ruiz asked.

“Oh, heavens, I don't think that will be necessary, will it, Natalie?”

She nodded innocently and kicked back in the chair. 

“I'll page Liza at the desk to collect you when we're finished.” Crocker said.

“I guess we'll see you in a bit then, Nat.” Ruiz said.

She fought the instinct to shudder. The events of the few minutes before, in the Shoe, had been shelved in a crowded space in Nat's mind, if only temporarily. It was incredibly toxic and unhealthy for her to do so, she knew that very well, but she had to keep up her front until her and Piper were alone, somewhere far away. 

“Well now ladies, we have much to discuss. First Lieutenant Boyd has been so generous as to let me have the time to cut a little deal with you. You help us, we help you. Maybe we can clean up some records if it all goes smoothly. No promises, though.”

“What about Randy, huh? Have you even told Piper what--”

“See? That's just the thing.” Crocker rose a finger to silence Nat. “After her break-in at the control tower, unauthorized use of NCR equipment, and hand in helping an officer go missing with a stolen Vertibird, I'm afraid that she won't be able to leave the police headquarters under her conditions, unless Lieutenant Boyd has other ideas.”

“What is going to happen to Nat? Or Randy, for that matter?” Piper said.

“That, I don't know much, but she'd be facing some serious charges if she doesn't cooperate.”

Nat stood up, “Why are you guys pretending like I'm not sitting here right beside you? Hello?!”

“Sit down, please, Natalie, or else we'll have to cut this meeting short.”

“Piper?!” She looked to her sister for support but she wouldn't even make eye contact.

“Nat, you're an adult now. Have you ever thought that living in a place like this and doing dumb shit might actually have some _real_ consequences unlike playing cards through the bars with security in Diamond City?” 

The inevitable, Piper knew before Nat arrived, was that she was going to be given a job to help her sister's cause. That's how these people seemed to work. They'd take full advantage of exploiting the resources they had on hand. It was just a matter of what _kind_ of work it was going to be to get Piper's attention and, dare she say, enthusiasm for something that she had a strong hunch was going to do the exact thing she wanted to avoid before the trip went south: put Nate and Miles in danger.

She wanted Nat to understand this, to feel the weight of her actions and the awful position she'd put a lot of people in. Randy included, to a certain degree. Of course Piper was going to help in any way that she could but she wanted Nat to learn from this and sense her disappointment as well.

“While I'm not at liberty to discuss other means with you, I thought I should let you know, Natalie, that the situation with the breach you created is under control. We do, however, always have other issues here on the Strip and at Camp McCarran.”

“Is Randy going to be okay though?” Nat pressed again.

“Mister Peralta is fine. He's being held at McCarran for the time being. I know that sometime this week we'll need the both of you to be interviewed, together, but think of this as a separate issue for now.”

“The issue at hand is that we're having something like a pest problem in one of the casinos here on the Strip. It's an issue one of the Families or the late Mr. House usually would have rectified but since the Lucky 38 has been locked up for the last fifteen years again, and after the Securitron ban of 2282-- all of these problems are in NCR hands. There's your history brief.”

“I'm told that this morning there was an escape at our correctional facility to the south-west. The man who escaped is named Claudio Beneventi, quite a pleasant chap: he's scalped three NCR officers in recent memory and burned another alive above the cliffs in Red Rock.”

“Is he a Khan?”

“What's a Khan?” Piper asked her sister.

“Warriors, drug traders, who live in Red Rock Canyon.”

“No, he's not one of the Great Khans. He's Omerta. Although he's very loosely associated with them. It's his younger brother we want. Emilio. Lieutenant Boyd is organizing a squad to hunt down Claudio as we speak. Emilio, on the other hand, is reported to be wheeling and dealing at the Omerta casino, Gomorrah.”

“Why can't you just send one of the officer's undercover into Gomorrah? Isn't that the easiest way of going about it?” Nat asked.

Crocker opened his mouth to answer but Piper cut him off.

“No, because if this Emilio guy is smart, he'd have the number of every officer here on the Strip. You'd need to hire someone externally.”

“That and,” Crocker smiled, shuffling the mess of papers on his desk until he produced a legit copy of the Publick, “seeing as your reporting is so consistent, we'd like to use your expertise while you're here to get whatever information you can get from the younger Beneventi by peaceful means.”

“Ah, _Portrait of A Serial Raider-Killer_ : the Pickman interviews.” Nat grinned, devilishly.

Piper shifted in her chair, “I dunno, Dennis. That's nice of you to ask and all but I have to be honest. I don't really do those kinds of things anymore--”

“She's lying!” Nat rolled her eyes.

“I understand. You have a family. A husband and a young son. Truth be told I wasn't expecting you to sign on with this immediately.”

“You have me.” Nat stretched across the armrest of her chair and took Piper's hands in hers out of her lap. “C'mon Pipes, it's not like you're out of the game entirely.”

The journalist snickered, avoiding her sister's gaze as she came around and knelt down in front of her feet.

“You're in great shape, you're a bit older, sure, but none the wiser.”

“Shut up, Nat, and get off of your knees, jeez.” Piper chuckled. The ambassador was laughing along himself.

“I missed you.” Nat whispered near Piper's ear as she got up off of the floor and returned to her seat.

“So then! That's one way of trying to seal the deal, eh?” Crocker said.

Piper shrugged. “I dunno. No offense, Nat, but could we talk some more about this alone, Dennis?”

Nat sighed in defeat, “Taken.”

“Of course, Miss Wright! Natalie, I'll just call for your escorts to get back to retrieve you.”

“No!” Nat said, under her breath, turning to her sister. “No, no! Let's just talk. Please.”

“Nat.” Piper cautioned.

“I need to know, Piper, I need to know! This is my chance! Don't let me rot--” She tried to grasp for Piper's hands again but she tore them away.

“Nat! Knock it off!”

“Piper, I'm scared. I'm so fucking scared.” Nat's face was riddled with anxiety but Piper tried not to mind, though her heart ached to see her in such a state.

The door opened and in came Ruiz with another associate whom Nat didn't recognize.

“Alright, kid. Let's get to your feet.” Ruiz said.

“We'll see you later, Natalie.” Crocker smiled.

Nat didn't move from her seat, opting to make it difficult for the two officers.

“On your feet!” The other officer demanded.

When she didn't oblige again, both officers came to her sides and jerked her roughly out of the chair and over the back rest.

“Hey! Easy with her, would ya?” Piper stood up. “I don't see any need to yank her around like a ragdoll.”

“Sorry, lady.” Ruiz grimaced, unsympathetically, cuffing Nat.

“Now you fucking care!” Nat said, her cheeks glistening with tears.

“Natalie! There's no need to be upset.” Crocker said.

“Fuck you, Crocker! Fuck all of you! These Legion bastards are gonna--” 

Piper watched as the officer who was behind Nat worked quickly to silence her with a gag. Crocker was even out of this seat.

They carried her out, kicking and thrashing.

“Was that necessary?” Piper asked incredulously.

“What? Your sister's comments or those officers' show of force? You tell me.” Crocker said, straightening the creases of his suit jacket.

“Both!” She said. “Don't try to tell me that one was less worse than the other if that's what you're getting at?!”

“My dear, let's get back to business. Shall we?”

~

Outside of the Ambassador's office, Nat managed to get one hand out of a tampered cuff that hadn't been secured properly, squirming out of Ruiz's hold in the process. The pair of officers retaliated by slamming her front into a wall and keeping her there while Ruiz jogged down the hall to retrieve a new set of handcuffs from a supply room.

It took a few minutes and Ruiz returned, sputtering from his weak lungs, and swearing at her and his new partner.

“Won't get out of these!” Ruiz said, jangling the cuffs in his hand.

“Hey, you got two pairs!” 

“I know. I got an idea.” He looked both ways down the hall. “It could be fun.”

~

With Nat out of the room, Piper felt like she'd be able to speak how she really felt, but after the little display both her sister and the two NCR officers put on, she didn't think she could be more candid with how her experience with the Republic had been so far.

She reluctantly agreed to help them with the Beneventi problem, volunteering Nate as her partner, but there was one condition: Nat got to walk free while they helped the NCR out, under Nate and Piper's watch. After all, she insisted that she'd need someone to babysit Miles while they infiltrated Gomorrah as a high-roller couple (Piper's words). There was no way _in hell_ she'd let one of those officer's mind her son in Nat's place.

It was a hard bargain to be sure, but Crocker didn't have much of a reason to say no. It was really up for Lieutenant Boyd to make those concrete decisions when she'd meet with Piper in the morning.

~

As if things could get any worse than they were already, the last tick that set off Piper was stumbling upon the officers' idea of a joke outside of the office. They'd attached a second pair of cuffs around Nat's ankles and she was struggling to get to her feet in the middle of the hallway.

“Are you guys nuts? Knock it off!”

They laughed at Piper and then went back to mocking her sister. Where the hell was there any _real order_ in this circus? She couldn't seem to find any other personnel in the hallway and Crocker was deemed pretty well useless in her book.

“C'mon! It's a joke! She fucked you off, too.” Ruiz clasped his hands together. “ _Chido!_ ”

“I said knock it off!” Without a thought, a door closing down the opposite hall behind her, Piper took the pistol she'd concealed in her waistband and cocked it at the two delinquents.

It was her first mistake. She thought she had anticipated the footsteps but before she knew it she was on the ground.

“Stay down, Wright, if you know what's good for you. Knew I couldn't count on those green idiots at McCarran to do a search proper.”

In the struggle, Piper was able to flip onto her back so she could get a good look at the person restraining her. The name was Lieutenant Boyd. Speak of the devil.

“Hey! And you assholes freeze right where you are!” The aging Lieutenant barked at the two officers trying to book it out of there with Nat. “My day keeps getting worse and worse.”

“Tell me about it.” Piper huffed as Boyd placed cuffs over her own wrists. It had been awhile, the journalist couldn't say that she missed the steel cutting into her skin.

“And it's about to get a even more worse.” Boyd said. “I'm locking you both up for the night. You equipped an unissued firearm in a government building. And say what you will about those numbskulls but... you aimed it at two military police officers.”

“Sure,” Piper smirked, “Just doing your job.”

“Shoulda nabbed you earlier for all of the other guns and, not to mention, unissued food you packed in the back of that Vertibird. That's a lot of paperwork.”

Once Piper had been cuffed, Boyd pulled her to her feet, stuffing the journalist's gun in her combat vest.

“And you two! Ruiz, Channing, is it? In my office before I change my mind about who I should be taking to lock-up right now. I'll be back.”

Boyd hooked Nat, ankles free, under her other elbow on the way towards the lobby. 

~

Nate and Miles were still waiting on a bench in the lobby of the Embassy when Boyd brought the girls through in handcuffs. What had been a happy game of watching the busy Vegas streets at sundown through the windows, turned into another meltdown pretty quickly as Miles watched his mother get separated from him once again.

“What's going on?” Nate stood, puzzled.

Miles charged at Piper but she couldn't stop, knocking into him and watching him fall onto his back in hysterics.

“Could you please keep your child under control?”

“Well then,” He smiled sardonically before getting in Boyd's face, “Could you tell me where and why you're taking them?”

“Easy, Blue.” Piper said, pushing her bound hands against Nate's stomach.

“She tried to shoot a couple of cops, Nate. No big deal.” Nat said. “Hi, by the way.”

“Out of the way, sir. Unless you wanna join them? That's fine with me.”

The nervous receptionist stood up from behind her desk. “Do you need me to call for back up, ma'am?”

“No, no, Liza. Or will I?” Boyd narrowed her eyes at Nate. “Shame 'cause I thought you and your partner were going to prove useful to us.”

He bent over laughing, then pointed a finger at Boyd's chest. “You got nerve, lady. I've had enough of this shit for one--”

“Nate!” Piper warned. His expression softened and then he placed both of his hands on either sides of her face. “Get Miles, dammit!”

“I'm getting you out, baby.” He pecked her on the lips. “Promise.”

Before they were fully out of the entrance, Nate scooped up Miles and held him, bawling, for all to see. “See this? You like to make kids cry themselves sore?”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess I'm the big, bad aren't I?” Boyd said. “Go to your motel, let me do my job.”

He watched them through the window, carrying on down the path and over to the HQ. He meant it when he said the poor kid had taken his fill of anxiety and grief for one day, maybe even a whole week. It took Nate a bit to get his bearings, soothe Miles down enough before he could even walk without collapsing into another fit.

“Do you know where you're going, Mister Thomas?” The receptionist said handing him a note.

“Yeah, it's just across the way, right?”

“It's the newest motel on the Strip. I think you'll quite like it.”

Nate had been given the choice to be put up in either the NCR-owned Bear Inn or the Vault 21 Hotel and Gift Shop. It doesn't seem easy to guess which one he wanted to avoid most.

“Hey, I'll probably be back tonight, you know, to try to see if we, or at least Miles, can go over to visit.” Nate said, leaning on the desk.

“The police headquarters closed to the public an hour ago.”

“I know. Just letting you know that I'm gonna try anyway.” Nate said, rapping his knuckles on the wood. “Family first, right Liza?”

“I'll say.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all who have been sticking by this story thus far! Thanks for reading ❤


	8. Jailhouse Rock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A proper reunion between the Wright sisters, an NCR badboy with a heart of gold, and two malts made with Brahmin milk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was fun! That's all.

No one knows what became of Michael Angelo, the hermetic sign-smith of the Strip. 

The factory he'd fashioned as his workshop had long since been demolished after the second battle of Hoover Dam in favor of econo-housing projects and lodgings proposed by the NCR in the wake of their great victory. The three Families had no reason to protest, given their new freedom from the bonds of a very much absent Mr. House, so the Republic took charge like they always seemed to do, stepping on just about anyone's toes in the process. Thus Michael Angelo, the man formerly known as Sheldon Weintraub, was the first to get trampled over in this deal. Devastated, he disappeared: too ashamed to return to the safety of his childhood home next door, Vault 21, and the sister he couldn't bear the thought of disappointing. The only peace Angelo likely knew was that though the Bear had moved in, in a big fluffy way, his work would live on.

After a day of being trod over, Nate and Miles went to the newly minted Bear Inn across the street to drop off some bags, now lighter with the contents that weren't confiscated at Camp McCarran, at their motel room. They arrived to find the manager's office packed with various curios of the shaggy mammal from grizzly rugs to polar bear patterned drapery. It was all pre-war camp: there wasn't a Yao Guai head mounted to the wall in sight.

Not bothered by the tacky decor, Miles took to a small teddy bear lying on a dresser in their room and flopped down on the double bed nearest to the window overlooking the Strip. He was just on the cusp of growing out of stuffed toys in favor of the action figures his father had collected for him over the years scavenging in burned-out Boston comics and hobby shops. Either way Nate was relieved to see him get some comfort after the bizarre events of the day, settling on the other bed in silence.

It was the first time that Nate truly felt the absence of Piper when he was alone with Miles, watching the boy swing his legs over the end of the bed as he stared at the ceiling, evidently wanting nothing more than for his mother to be there. It could be said that Nate had done the best he could given the circumstances but sometimes he struggled with words in weighty moments, finding his actions to do a better job instead. Still, his son needed reassurance and Nate was feeling at a loss of anything to say that might cheer him up.

He thought bitterly that it was his "Dad way" of not knowing what to say when his child wasn't fawning all over him. His spontaneous plan was to suggest that they get out of the there for a bit, take a stroll down the famous Strip as the action began to pick up in the evening.

~

A Milk Bar caught Nate's eye as they passed a row of bohemian tents contrasting the excess of the Ultra Luxe Hotel and that was that. He took a stool underneath the strings of toy lanterns at the bar, ordering a tall glass for Miles and a short one for himself. The shakes did the trick: a little sour, but that was characteristic of Brahmin-milk blended with banana yucca. 

“Dad?”

“Hm?” 

“How did Mom and Nat get in trouble?”

Nate stirred his drink absentmindedly, giving the impression that he wanted to put off having to explain Piper's arrest, coupled with her long history at the Diamond City lock-up, to Miles for as long as he could. Fortunately for Miles, though, there was no room for his father to swerve around it anymore.

“Is there anything we can do, Dad? Maybe we can talk to the soldiers and make them less mad?”

“It doesn't work like that, bud. I wish it did...”

“You could tell them! Mom's one of the good guys not a bad guy!”

Nate stifled a laugh and watched a throng of drunken casino goers amble through the maze of tents ahead, knocking into tables and others who were milling about. It reminded him of home, like a little piece of the market in Diamond City had been transplanted onto the New Vegas Strip. A part of him wanted to emphasize that the kind of thought Miles was applying to the situation wasn't always that simple. That there was, the more he thought about what went down in the station, a reasonable fairness to the NCR's hesitancy to trust them. A feeling that had become very, very much mutual between both parties.

“It's funny that Nat was in the same place as us the whole time! Did she know we were coming to New Vegas before?”

“That I don't know. We'll have to wait and see.”

“I'm glad that Nat is with her. With Mom.” 

“Yep. And I wonder where Randy the pilot got taken off to.”

“He's a liar though!”

Miles tried to imagine how his mother might understand the situation, wherever she was, in the same moment. As he got older he began to note the kind of questions Piper asked and how she used her intuition under pressure. From the time that Miles had spent with her while she worked, as a toddler bouncing on her lap as she held interviews from the couches at the Publick (much to the chagrin of many subjects, who couldn't envision why the Commonwealth's most notorious reporter would bring her infant son that close to frank talk about grisly murders and scandals) or mashing on the keys of her terminal, the boy had developed a kind of self-awareness and empathy where he could see outside of his own perspective.

Despite the crying tantrums he'd had earlier that day, as only a seven year-old could, he began to see the pointlessness of those kinds of outbursts. Would Captain Cosmos cry if his mom had to go to jail? No way: he'd send Jangles in as a diversion while the intergalactic Cap got her out.

“Mom doesn't lie.”

Nate gave his son a nudge of reassurance. “She's gonna be fine in there. You know that right? She's the toughest person I've ever met. First thing tomorrow we'll go see her and Nat.”

“But Dad!” Miles frowned. “You promised her that you'd get her out. You promised!”

“Finish your drink. No more of that.”

“You _promised_.”

“Miles!” He said sternly.

The boy looked glumly at the cup in front of him and reluctantly took a sip. He gave his father the side-eye as he followed through but it wasn't long before he was reminded of how good the malt actually tasted. He finished it slowly, savoring every last drop.

“Why are you giving me that look, bud?” Nate asked, noting Miles' scowl even as he seemed to be enjoying the milkshake.

“It's nothin'.”

“Your mom gives me that exact look when I'm being silly. Am I being silly right now?”

Miles broke into a fit of giggles as his father became the delightfully odd person he adored once again.

“Alright, look,” Nate said, “do you have any ideas for how we get in there after hours or what?”

“Let me think about that.” Miles blushed with a scheming smile.

~

 

“If you ask me, I think the both of you should be thankful: you get a whole block to yourselves.”

“Lovely.” Piper said as Lieutenant Boyd removed her handcuffs. Perhaps the Lieutenant was being charitable: on the way through the compound, she bypassed general population, where the younger Wright sister had already proved too hard to handle in there, and lead them to a series of rarely used overflow cells in the basement.

“It's quiet and roomy.” Nat said. “Think we could get used to this, sis?”

Piper chuckled, running her fingers along the red lines circling her wrists. The cuffs hadn't even been on her for longer than five minutes but they still managed to make their marks.

“Oh look! We even get a bed too. Piper can take it 'cause I don't want to catch anything.”

Boyd rolled her eyes. “Nice. Real nice to see how happy you are to see your sister, kid.”

“Yeah, like finding a six on the streets of New Reno.”

Piper was good at giving the impression that Nat's insults rolled off her back. In reality it stung like hell to see Nat reach for such low and desperate points. 

“We're gonna be here all night, Nat. I wouldn't want you to run out of bull before it's over.” 

“Oh, I'm not gonna have that problem!”

“Hey, despite the shit she pulled back in the Embassy, I hope you know she's the one who saved your ass today. I came pretty close to taking you out to Red Rock and leaving it up to the elements to decide your fate.” Boyd said. “Now don't make me regret bringing you down here, alright? I know you both have a lot of catching up but remember we're going to be doing the exact same thing at six hundred hours tomorrow. No funny shit: don't think that I won't keep one or both of you here through tomorrow night if the need arises. Under my lead you're going to do what I say. Got it?”

“Ma'am.” Nat mock saluted and fell back onto the cot rather dramatically.

“You're not carrying anything else are you?”

“Nope.” Nat said.

“Not _you_.” 

“You'd be amazed what I've seen one sicko do to a series of victims with a single ball-point pen.” Piper reached into the lining of her jacket and handed over a switchblade and a couple of pens. “I've got a packet of strikes too. You want those?”

“You're funny, Wright. Keep your matches.”

Nat scoffed. “Ugh. Why don't you both just kiss already!”

Normally, Piper would've blushed at a charged phrase like that but all she could seem to focus on was how quickly the Lieutenant's cheeks rouged up instead, leaving a crack in her hard exterior.

“Night, Carrie.” Piper winked.

Boyd cleared her throat, fidgeting with the pairs of cuffs in her hands. She found herself unable to fire back at the journalist for the informality. “Don't try me. Six hundred hours, got it?”

Once the sisters were locked up and Lieutenant Boyd was up the stairs and out of earshot, Nat erupted into laughter. “Did you see her face?! I can't breathe!”

Piper raised her eyebrows suggestively.

“You _literally_ almost charmed the pants off of Carrie fuckin' Boyd! Do you realize that? And did you see how she was working those handcuffs? Damn!”

“What can I say? I've still got it.” 

Nat moved off of the bed and paced over to her sister. “I guess if things ever go south with Nate and he takes Miles you can always get yourself a greying lieutenant!”

“You're beyond twisted, kiddo.”

In a move that contrasted her hostility moments earlier, Nat pulled Piper into a hug that nearly knocked her off of her feet. “Jeez!”

“Don't swear, dammit!” Nat smiled. “It's _me_ though. Not that little brat who essentially likened you to a New Reno prostitute.”

“Yeah? What did sex workers ever do to you?” Piper said. “That was... all an act?”

“You bet. I had to.” 

“Why?”

“C'mon, you know what these people are like now. They want us to stay divided, always infighting, 'cause we're weaker that way. Not to mention they're a bunch of hypocrites who like to _pretend_ they're all fighting for a single cause.”

“For the record,” Piper let out a shaky breath as she held Nat's face with her hands, “I'm still really, really pissed. But it's awfully good to see you, Nat.”

“You too, sis. You too. You look so well!”

“I wish I could say the same for you from the looks of it.” Her arm was patched up rather crudely. “What happened there?”

“I know you haven't seen much of anything yet but there are these massive geckos here. All colors and sizes. I hunted them out west for awhile, sometimes just liked to watch 'em roam around in the desert. Their hides sell for around fifty caps a pop.” Nat patted the strip of gauze that wound around her bicep. “Anyway, you can imagine what happened: got a bit too close for comfort and one decided to gnaw on my arm. You haven't _lived_ until you've seen a pack of Golden Geckos during their mating season though. Ugh, exquisite!”

“And the shiner?”

Piper ran her thumb over the violet bruise blooming out from beneath Nat's eye, causing her to wince. “That one's a little bit less interesting.”

“Yeah?”

Nat had been abandoned by her confidence. She didn't want to lie to her sister but she thought, very wrongly, that there were more pressing issues and discoveries coming to light than the abuse she'd experienced at the hands of Officer Ruiz and his cohorts.

“Got in a scuffle with some bum lady upstairs, claimed I nicked her booze while she was on the can. So she decked me.”

Piper sighed. “Did you steal her booze?”

“Well, yeah.” She giggled. “But I should've shoved the neck of the bottle up her ass while I could.”

~

Alone in the barracks, Jesse Reyes jolted awake in his bunk. As his brain caught up to speed with the rest of his body, he clutched his chest, not realizing how long he'd nodded off for. It was a false assumption, he used to say, that when one worked long hours inside of a building with no windows you'd end up losing a sense of time. At that moment he could just _feel_ that it was dark, hearing the hundreds of lightbulbs sing as they lit the Strip outside.

The brisk air circulating the room from an industrial fan lapped at the sweat streaking his back. Despite the fact that his moves were frantic, pulling out a clean set of fatigues from his locker and stumbling as he hopped on one leg for the putting on of his boots, he felt an easiness inside that he'd been able to sweat out a comedown with a nap.

In the communal washroom, Jesse took out his razor at a sink and washed his face and neck. Someone was tunelessly whistling in the showers, the steam was fogging up the mirror faster than Jesse could get a good look at his own face. 

“Hey you got any soap out there, buddy?” 

Jesse turned and saw Wes Hammon poking his blond mop out from around a stall. Contrary to speculation, military police officers on the Strip were rationed out things like toiletries just like anyone else. If you lost a toothbrush or a towel, well, that was just tough shit. They weren't pampered by the decadence of New Vegas as, say, those at Camp McCarran seemed to believe.

“I do. What's it to ya?” Jesse said.

Stumped, Hammon cleared his throat. “Um, I need it to wash--”

“I'm just messing with you! Here.” Jesse lobbed the bar of ivory soap over to him which the other officer caught expertly. He thought about making a tasteless joke, about it being a good thing that he didn't drop it, but the lingering attitude of a certain someone, a person who made him not want to be _one of those guys_ anymore, stopped him. 

“Thanks, Reyes.” Hammon flashed a nervous smile, flicking his wrist with the bar in hand. 

“Hey man, don't mention it.” He pointed as Hammon disappeared into the stall again. “Pay it forward, eh?”

Swiping at the mirror, Jesse caught his reflection. His deep brown eyes were bloodshot around the whites.

“Not bad though, Jess. Not bad.” 

He ran a hand through his cropped cut, smoothing down the sides. The shadow of stubble on his face didn't look half bad and hadn't begun to itch so he thought _fuck it_.

He didn't have time to wait around for Hammon to be done with the soap anyhow.  
~

_“I can't wait until I see my baby's face...”_

Jesse hummed an old tune as he sauntered down the corridor towards the lobby. Day and night security were doing a swap and a handful of those who were just finishing up their shifts seemed to be sticking around for awhile yet. Jesse was on his way out the door when he passed the group huddled around the terminal at the front desk. By the amount of laughter and conversation they were sharing, the security camera must have been trained on some picked-on newbie who was getting gassed at the front gate. 

“Reyes you gotta see this!” The officer manning the terminal called to Jesse.

“Not now, man. You guys have fun.”

“What you got in the bag?”

Jesse looked at the duffel that was slung over his shoulder and patted it. “Oh this? Just some contraband I gotta take over to Benson.”

“'Contraband'? Who are we? _Lieutenant Boyd's Boys_? Get your ass over here and see this, bro!”

Lowering the bag off of his shoulder slightly, Jesse went around to see what all the fuss was about.

“Look! He's sending the little guy over now! Tough break, kid.”

The camera was facing the plaza and on the screen, a dark green silhouette could be seen moving up to two guards standing by on the doors to the lock-up.

“What's going on?” Jesse asked.

“Y'know the family they caught Peralta smuggling over on the Vertibird this afternoon? Well, the dad's tryin' to bust the wifey out of the pen as we speak. And he's using the son as a distraction!”

_Shit._

“Pathetic!” Another guard spoke up. “Pimping out kids isn't a joke, am I right?”

The group broke into another obnoxious round of fraternal laughter, boos, and elbow jabs.

Jesse's eyes narrowed on the screen, watching the boy with the two guards. Over by the gate was the silhouette of the man, a longer shadow distancing in the street behind him. It didn't occur to the officer what he'd been doing all day to have missed this proceeding. Now he just had to swoop in and keep the both of them out of trouble.

~

 

“Dad, look! They can't see us!”

“Keep it down, buddy.” Nate reached for Miles' shoulder and brought him to the ground behind the cover of a bricked section of the gate surrounding the Embassy. His Pip-Boy map was calibrating with the new environment which he'd hoped, when ready, would grant him any hidden access points to the MP building across the plaza. A tiny orange arrow flashed at the center of the screen.

While his father was distracted with the Pip-Boy again, Miles peeked through the chain link fencing which gave him a glimpse of the door his mother was taken through.

“Bad news.”

“What?” Miles turned and hovered over his father's arm.

“There's no other way. See that line there, bud? Solid. The only way we can go is through this gate. I told you so.”

“Nuh-uh!” Miles wagged a finger.

“I can't go in guns blazing, Miles. Not cool. They took them from us back at the airport, remember?”

“Very funny, Dad.”

Nate ruffled his son's hair. He enjoyed humoring him every now and then, especially if he could get a smile out of him in a shitty situation. 

“C'mon, bud. I'm feeling kind of sleepy after those milkshakes.”

“They were so good!” Miles scooted back against the wall and put his head on Nate's shoulder.

“Weren't they?” He figured now that he'd been lying to himself about the Ultra Luxe Hotel. From down the street, all intact, it _was_ fucking impressive. His son hadn't seemed to give a damn about the complete overload of the senses around them since, well, ever. No, his head was resting on a particular angle on Nate's shoulder so he could still see the gate. Miles wasn't going to give up on Piper anytime soon and it made Nate feel a bit dizzy with the warmth he felt for him.

“Tell you what...” Nate put a hand on the boy's knee.

“What?” Miles perked up.

“How about we try--”

“One more time?!”

“One more time.”

~

Under the glow of the searchlight the guard officers loomed large over Miles as he shuffled up to them. With balled fists he prepared himself for what he'd rehearsed only moments ago with his father.

“Excuse me?”

One guard scoffed at the interruption while the other bent down to Miles' level.

“How'd you get in here, fella?”

“You kidding me?” The guard nudged his partner.

Then came the waterworks on cue. Across the plaza, from behind his cover in the darkness, Nate kept his fingers crossed. “Good job, buddy.”

Both of the guards watched in puzzlement as the boy began to sputter and beg to see his mother. If anything, it only seemed to help them catch on quicker.

“Aren't you a bit too old now to be crying for your mommy, fella?”

Then it was Nate's turn. He jumped the gate while the guards were interrogating Miles and jogged over.

“Whoa, whoa! I'm so sorry about this!” Nate said, pretending to suck air into his lungs with difficulty. “Miles?! I told you not to run away like that! What were you thinking?”

“Man, if you don't get you and your kid off the Embassy grounds in one minute I'll--”

“I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” Nate put both of his hands up in surrender. “Easy now. We'll just be going.”

“But, Dad, you were supposed to say--!” Miles felt his father squeeze his jaw shut before he could continue.

“What's the matter, guys?”

Nate turned and saw another officer, carrying a long duffel bag, stride down the walk from the third building.

“Not your business, Reyes! We've got this under control!”

“Yeah we're just leaving, I promise! Sorry for the trouble.” Nate chuckled anxiously.

“No trouble.” The officer pouted, his bronze face appearing in the arc of the searchlight. “They're with me.”

“Boyd gave you permission?”

“Yeah, just got off the radio with her. I have to drop these chems off with Benson anyway and the ol' girl softened up. The kid here needs to see his Ma. Have a little heart, cabrón.”

The two guards looked between each other and then shrugged. “Whatever, man. Go ahead.”

Nate had to hold Miles' shoulders down to keep him from getting overexcited. “Thank you.”

“Follow me, fellas. Name's Officer Reyes but folks call me Jesse around here.”

“Jesse.” Nate shook the young man's hand when they were inside of the compound. Jesse. Randy. He could only ascertain that it was the bad guys who liked formalities. “I'm Nate and this is my boy, Miles. I don't know what strings you pulled but know that we really, really appreciate it.”

“No need to thank me. Those guys owed me a favor, you know? Those don't go broken around here.”

In the first room, Jesse nodded at the officer on watch and led them down two flights of stairs on the east side of the building. There was a reinforced door at the foot of the stairs.

“Damn.” Jesse tried the handle but it wouldn't budge.

Nate had to warn Miles off of requesting a cap for the curse word, just in case the officer changed his mind. “Locked up tight?”

“Yeah.” Jesse huffed, reaching around in the pocket of his field jacket and producing, what Nate was surprised to see, a lockpick. “This one should be easy though. No one comes down here anymore.”

“Are you gonna pick the lock, sir?” Miles' voice boomed through the stairwell.

Jesse smiled. “Just gonna give it a little nudge is all.”

“Uh, if it breaks I might have another one on me.” Nate added, obviously trying to endear himself to his son. “Picked a few in my day.”

“Thanks, boss.” Jesse was focused for a few minutes before the handle gave. “We're good! Should be down the hall.” Before he could open the door fully, Miles dived under Jesse's arm and made a run for it, calling out for his mother and Nat.

The sisters were waiting by the cell door as Miles followed their voices until he found them at the end of the block. Piper wrapped her arms around him through the bars as best as she could.

Nate offered to pick the cell door open with Jesse's permission but the catch had to be that Piper and Nat couldn't leave, even though the cell would be unlocked for the rest of the night. Jesse's willingness to do such a thing made impact only moments later when he practically swept Nat off the ground in a hug and proceeded to press light kisses to her brow.

“Took you long enough.” Nat said bluntly.

“I'm here.” Jesse closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers. “Aren't I?”

There they were, off in their own world.

The other couple, of course, expressed their mutual surprise by stealing glances at them during their own reunion. _You didn't know? Are you sure?_ Piper felt jarred by the whole scene but, with Nate's easing, she tried to remember that they were kids. Even if this guy was with the NCR, she'd have to give him a chance. And if Nat was happy, then Piper could learn to be happy for her sake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the reads and the patience! Tell me what you think, too, if you care to share :)
> 
> Trivia: Officer Jesse Reyes is based off of an ol' NV Courier I made. I dig him a lot. He'll become pretty important, pretty soon.


	9. All I Have To Do Is Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things ramp up as Piper and Nate come to an agreement with the NCR. Nat uncovers something peculiar in New Reno. Piper has weird dreams (possibly related to Nat's discovery?), yo.

Piper watched the light bulb flicker overhead, projecting the shadows of Nat rummaging through the duffel bag Jesse had left behind on the floor. Emergency supplies, she guessed. Soon, she was ducking as a wool blanket came flying over Nat's shoulder to where she sat huddled on the bed. Nate and Miles had been there with them only minutes before but she found herself missing their presence already when paired with the more erratic nature of her sister.

“Better bundle up. When the sands cool out there, this brick hole will turn into a fridge.” Nat said.

Piper huffed and draped the blanket, the fabric of which was incredibly starched, over her shoulders. “This ain't my first time in the pen, kiddo.”

Nat looked over her shoulder and blew a loose strand of hair out of her face with pouted lips. “Guess I'm taking after you after all, huh?”

Years and years ago, a comment like that would've made Piper twitch in her boots. Her younger sister had a mind of her own and Piper rested easier after Nat's teens rolled around even with all of the angst and dissent those years brought. On the other hand, the last thing she wanted to hear was that Nat had pissed off a whole chapter of the governing force of the western states. Oh, and that she had picked up a smoking habit.

Piper snickered as Nat put on a pullover sweater that was obviously a size too large for her. It had to belong to that wiry Jesse guy. “So?”

“So what?” She got to her feet with a bottle of whiskey and a thermos in each hand. The former item compelled Piper in a way that could be said like: _This was a shit day. Bring it on._

“So what the hell have you gone and done? I feel so stupid for even being here. Shit...”

Nat rolled her eyes and plopped down beside Piper. The bed was so narrow that sleeping while sitting the way they were, shoulder to shoulder, was probably the most comfortable option. Nat settled her head against Piper's side as she twisted the bottle open and poured a healthy amount into the thermos cap to pass on.

“Drink first, story after.” Nat said as they tapped their drinks together. Her own sip came straight from the bottle, ending with a cough.

“God, you're worse than me.” Piper rasped. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, Nat was still a toddler she pushed around in a rusty shopping cart. “What's the deal with the stud?”

“I met Jesse in New Reno. Randy, too.”

“Yeah? Why did you go there again? I've heard it's a dump.”

“Yeah, I mean, it _is_ a dump. There were a ton of modern resource wars there, a drought and everything. The streets got rioted to shit. It ain't even NCR territory.” Maybe it was the whiskey, but there was a hint in Nat's voice that seemed incredulous that Piper would need to ask about the city. “Bad work, there. Bad bars. I asked around and got directed to this abandoned railway station.” She shifted her weight into Piper so she could reach into her pants pocket and produced a small token around the size of a cap.

Piper squinted and snatched the thing out of her sister's open palm.

“Hey!”

“Hush.” She turned it over between her index finger and thumb. A burnt copper disk: rough on one side, branded on the other with a 'W' and striped halo, like sun rays. Piper's heart skipped a beat and then picked up, faster.

“You have no idea how much I probably damaged my lungs and the critters I had to sneak around to find that! I practically flipped the place upside down.”

“Where did you find this?” Piper brushed the 'W' over with her thumb, entranced by the seal.

“I told you! This old railway station in town.” Nat said. “Apparently there used to be a whole hidden distillery underground there run by, get this, a family by the name of Wright.”

Piper gave her sister a look of disapproval. Something wasn't adding up. A feeling of mutual distrust hung over everything they shared next but neither of them felt inclined to speak up about it. 

“Our name wasn't _uncommon_ , I know! But come on, sis. You gotta admit it's pretty cool, right? A family of mobsters and chem-runners right in the heart of New Reno.”

“Who'd have thunk?” Piper shook her head, reticently handing the seal back to Nat.

“They're all dead, of course. Or displaced somewhere we'll never know.” Nat felt her sister's eyes on her as she shoved the seal back into her pocket. “Anyway I met Randy and Jesse at this bar in town when I cleaned their clocks playing cards. They'd been between posts outside of New Reno and had just gotten approval to be transferred here. But they had this whole plan, see? They're from here after all. They were just little kids, in '81, when a battle over this big ol' dam and all of the electricity in the Mojave happened.”

_Hoover Dam, was it?_ Piper could almost hear her father's voice, Miles Sr., talking about a dam when he told her stories before bed. But surely that had to be before 2281! She always imagined the dam was somewhere up in the Capital Wasteland. If she had been born in '63 that meant she would've been eighteen at the time, meaning her dad had been dead for two years. That wasn't right. There had to have been another battle preceding it.

“The NCR and these clowns in metal skirts, called themselves Caesar's Legion, were warring over it forever until the latter was finally driven out after the second fight. The Legion were real baddies apparently: enslaved women, wiped out whole tribes, raped, murdered, and crushed just about all they set sights on. Jesse... experienced this first-hand, as a kid. He almost died trying to escape their clutches. Flash forward to today: Jesse and Randy meet yours truly. They find out that I know how to sneak around undetected and fix a printing press...”

“The latter of which is totally irrelevant.” Piper snorted.

“Right. But valuable and interesting! So I get along on the ride to Camp McCarran without a hitch. The boys tell me that there are troopers from here and all the way back to California who are whispering that there are Legion splinter groups, weak, but active and silently gaining strength in the east again. _Snatching. People._ In the night, Piper. Of course the brass will say anything to dispel the rumors. But take this Beneventi asshole for example...”

“They think those brothers are with the Legion?”

“Yes. One of them, the one who escaped, at least. Claudio, I think it was? But like I said, the brass won't say nothin' and it got to the point where folks like Jesse and Randy had enough and decided to take the first preventive measures and look for answers themselves. That's where I came in, finally. I snuck into an abandoned comm tower at McCarran and fired up the radio in the booth but guess what? No dice. We made one bad move based on knowledge that the same comm tower had been used by a Legion spy, in NCR disguise, who led a terrorist attack on the monorail years ago. At least it was at a lower risk that I got caught rather than the boys... or else you and Nate wouldn't be here.”

“Hey, don't forget you've dragged my kid into this now, too.”

Nat rubbed her forehead and had another drink of the whiskey. “I know... fuck, I'm sorry, sis. We'll keep him safe, alright? Nothin's gonna happen to the little squirt. Not on my watch.”

“Well, whatever, it can't be helped. This is just...” Piper exhaled.

“I'm sorry. Really, Piper. To you and Nate.”

“Whatever. Hey, share the goods.” She held out the cap for a refill. “Nate hasn't been himself lately. He fell off the wagon. God, look at how supportive I'm being...”

“It's not like you had a problem though. What happened to set him off?”

“I don't know. He was working with Nicky on a case that went south in a gruesome manner.” Piper trailed off, feeling a bit heady from the alcohol, remembering Dogmeat. “Nat.”

“Oh no, it gets worse than that?” She said, half-jokingly.

Piper grasped Nat's free hand and squeezed it gently. “Ol' Meaty got real sick, Nat. A couple months back... we had to say goodbye to him. Or else he'd be here.”

“No,” Nat dropped the bottle, hand flying to her face, a bit of the brew splashed onto her lap. “No, no. That sudden? Fucking _dog_ -goddammit!” 

The drunken slip almost made Piper lose it. She'd come around in the grieving process to remembering all of the great memories with Dogmeat only, and not those horrible last few weeks of shitting blood and howling in pain.

“To Dogmeat. Fuck.” Nat held the bottle at arms length, towards the ceiling.

“The best boy.” Piper agreed, doing the same.

~

“Dad!”

Miles knelt over his snoring father, making a last effort to wake him by pinching his nostrils closed. When it worked, Nate awoke gulping for air through his mouth. Through the brain fog, the events of the day before seemed eons away and all that bothered him was the incessant rapping on the motel door from across the room.

“What the?” Nate groaned, pushing himself up on his elbows.

Miles pointed to the door and shrugged.

“Alright. Good man, good man.” Nate patted his son's shoulder, grateful that he didn't answer the door on his own. You never knew. “Jeez, what's the time buddy?”

The fish-eyed lady from the motel office downstairs stood blinking behind the door on the baking concrete.

“Hi,” Nate smiled, wincing in the sun. 

“Afternoon.” She returned a sort of impassive smile, revealing her purple gums, then frowned.

“It's twelve forty-eight, Dad!” Miles called from the bed, where he sat with his father's Pip-Boy on his lap. Nate turned back to the room to acknowledge Miles and caught his own reflection in the mirror on the wall next to the door, reminding him that he was standing in boxers and a t-shirt in front of this poor old woman.

“Sorry.” He chuckled nervously.

“Quite alright.” she said. “I hope you both slept fine.” 

Nate spotted a familiar bulky shoulder bag on the ground by the woman's feet and, on the contrary, he'd been up most of the night having snatched a few packets of instant coffee from the check-in office while Miles slumbered in a fort of blankets taking up most of the bed. He sipped on the watery coffee while perusing pre-war Nevada travel literature.

“One of the boys from McCarran brought this by earlier this morning. I believe it belongs to you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Nate said. “I'm sorry you had to lug it up the steps. Thank you.”

“Oh, nonsense. I got my boy Chance to lift 'er for me.” She deadpanned. “By the by, I got word that you have to move a few rooms down since you all are gonna be staying for longer. Hope you all don't mind.” She handed a key to Nate. “Number nine. There's a kitchenette and a fold-out sofa so I'd say it's an upgrade from this room. You can thank Lieutenant Boyd over at the Embassy.”

“Wow.” Nate twirled the key in his fingers, unsure of what to make of the Lieutenant's gesture given that she'd almost had him removed from the Embassy building the day before. “Thanks, uh –“

“BJ. Bessie Jean.” There was that cold smile again.

“Of course.” Nate said.

“Don't forget to holler if you need anything. My boy Chance has gotta get off his behind sometime!”

~

Bessie Jean wasn't kidding about Room Nine being a step up from their last one. Gone was the tacky décor for an interior that was a little bit more contemporary with the western furniture that the owners had been able to salvage and had the bonus amenities to boot. Inside the entrance forked with a cozy living area and kitchen and then there was a bedroom and bathroom down the hallway to the right, shrouded in peeling wallpaper. Nate could only surmise that a place like this was usually reserved for visiting diplomats.

“What did we do to earn this one, buddy?”

Miles shrugged and kicked back on the couch. “It's nice. Maybe the people felt bad for us?”

Nate laughed, peeking in the fridge. It was clean to the point where he was scared to use it later. “Ha! Maybe you're right.” He rounded the wall and dropped the bags down on the coffee table.

“What's in the bag that the lady gave us?”

“I forget.” Nate sighed. “Let's find out?”

Food, a pistol, more snacks, and a treasure at the bottom wrapped in cloth. Miles' Pip-Boy Jr. Nate would remember because he packed it in there himself. Almost immediately Miles got his hands in there and fished around for a snack, validating the surprise.

~

“You're late.” Liza, the Embassy's secretary, said bounding out of her seat. “Your wife has been waiting.”

Nate followed Liza as she hurried down the hall, mildly entertained by a thought that lingered in his head, that she referred to Piper as his “wife”. It was a natural assumption but a bizarre one in the way their domestic life had been playing out.

“You could have paged the motel, no?”

“Ha! I presume that Bessie Jean missed the memo. It's alright. I just don't want anything to blow back on my head.”

_Uh. How serious is this?_ Nate lacked the courage in that moment to say it out loud. In other words he was completely, irrevocably out of his element, never having to deal with the law aside from a questioning after the car accident that busted up a guard rail and his knee. His time in the army had him believe that he was protecting the law, even in the fields of war. As if the wastes could get any weirder.

Liza stopped at a door that had been left ajar.

“Lieutenant?”

“Come in.”

Nate took a deep breath and was practically pushed into the room by Liza before she scurried off back to her desk. Piper was sitting in a plush chair, her back to him, but he could see her scribbling furiously onto a mess of cocktail napkins on her lap.

“Welcome back.” The Lieutenant was bright-eyed, in mid-sip of a cup of coffee, and generally in better spirits than the night before. Nate could count on that.

“Boyd, is it?” He squinted and then dove for a handshake across her desk. “I'm embarrassed.”

“It's alright. It has been... a strange couple of days here, hours for you.”

Piper sighed and to Nate it was if she was emanating a word like “Asskisser” his way.

“I, _we_ ,” he corrected himself, “just have a lot of questions. I'm sorry we had to get off on the wrong foot.”

“Speak for yourself.” Boyd chuckled, nodding in Piper's direction. “It's like I tell my team 'don't let your emotions get the best of you. Even if it just may get you killed later than if you did.'”

Nate eased himself into his seat and gazed at Piper lovingly before darting back to the attention of Lieutenant Boyd. In those few seconds, though, it looked like Piper hadn't slept a wink and had, frankly, been drinking? She knocked back her coffee with a fervor he hadn't seen since the last time she had a hangover around Christmas.

“Can I get Liza to fix you a coffee, Nate?” 

“Sure, I'm good.” He smiled, trying to peer over at what his girlfriend had been writing. “I mean, no. Thanks.”

“So this isn't the first time a broadcast hijacking has happened on your watch, Lieutenant Boyd?” Piper said.

The Lieutenant leaned forward slightly, “Are you aiming to write a biographical exposé on me or using this on the grounds to catch an informant?”

“It's a simple question.” Piper snorted.

“Wait. What's going on here?” Nate asked hopefully. He had an inkling from their conversation in the cell the night before but wanted Boyd to believe he was oblivious. 

“Look, you can't blame us for taking this seriously. The first time this happened we were in the middle of a war: our monorail got bombed to shit, a handful of our best men and women were lost in the midst of the carnage.”

“Can someone fill me in?”

“We've got work to do.” Piper sighed and then tilted her head towards her partner. “Saddle up. This is a long one...”

~

The proposition going forward in the proceedings between Lieutenant Boyd, Piper, and Nate was this: agree to help the NCR out with their “pest” problem and Nat Wright would be pardoned by the Republic (or at least in the Mojave) and the family would get a “safe” ride back to the Commonwealth. The NCR would also agree to covering accommodations: food, a place to stay, protection, shopping for any arms or wares in preparation for Piper and Nate's mission that night.

The mission, as Dennis Crocker had alluded to the day before, had been to pacify and retrieve information from Emilio Beneventi: a 29 year-old, womanizing mess of a man who ran with the Omerta family and potentially had ties to burgeoning Legionnaires. He was also most likely to know the whereabouts of his older brother Claudio: a Legion worshiping psychopath, also known as Caligula for his apparent bloodlust, who had escaped from the NCR Correctional Facility the morning prior.

It really wasn't in the couple's code of honor to begin with but they were still urged to do anything but kill Emilio Beneventi. They'd simply have to track him down inside of the Gomorrah Hotel and Casino, and find a way to get him alone in his room. The rest was up to Piper and Nate, which meant they could get as creative as they wanted.

Oh, and Nat got stuck babysitting the kid back at the hotel. No cells, no handcuffs, but after a heavy negotiation it was argued by Boyd that there had to be an officer keeping watch. Quite amusingly her suggestion happened to be Jesse Reyes.

~

Back at the suite, Piper hugged Miles, who was already occupied to the point of possession by the screen of his new Pip-Boy, and then padded away moodily to the bedroom to catch up on the sleep she lost drinking and talking with Nat all night.

Nate followed her to the room, watched her drop her jeans onto the floor and crawl into bed wordlessly. He tucked her in and planted a soft kiss on her head.

“Do you want anything to eat when you wake up?”

“Ask me when I wake up.” She tossed in the sheets, rolling onto her side. “Sorry, that was rude. 'M tired, Blue.”

“I know. Sleep.” The next kiss was louder. “I'll have something ready when you wake up.”

~

That afternoon Piper's dreams were full of empty spaces and strange faces. Her whole body had been shrunk down, bobbing on someone's shoulder. The desert stretched around her, as far as the eye could see. A warm voice babbled in soothing tones she couldn't understand. Off the shoulder she was held out so she could see the face that belonged to the voice. It was her wide-eyed father: young and gawky, acne pocked cheeks, a gap in his mouth from where he was missing a front tooth. Had he been a brawler or did he just consume too many sweets? He was hardly a young man, barely out of young adulthood, that's what she knew. Nothing he was saying made any sense as if she had baby ears, too. She couldn't even read his lips... but he was smiling. Exhausted, but smiling. 

Her mother wasn't in her line of view, over Miles Sr.'s shoulder, but there were the other sun burnt faces. She could almost feel her mother, sense her out, withdrawn and tightly wound up in her own mind, the mind of a child. Her hips much too narrow to have carried and delivered baby Piper easily mere months – a year at the most – before. Unhappiness and scorn personified. Who could blame her?

~

Miles had slipped into the room to check on his mother after lunch. He went to her side and pushed back the strands of her hair that covered her sleeping face.

“Mommy?”

He watched her mouth move and a short, weak sound come out that seemed to echo him before she turned away. More quiet gibberish and Miles was convinced that he had placed a curse on her and that she would never wake up. He ran to get Nate.

~

_Mum. Mum._

It had happened before: the uttering of a word with an almost mantra-like consistency. The word sent a trigger to Piper's body in her half-unconsciousness, inducing a kind of sleep psychosis. Next came the tears and the lazed thrashing. Nate was there in time holding her close and talking patiently in her ear, trying to reel her back in.

If he closed his eyes he could still see inside of the cave, the smell of sulfur eroding his senses, and the impatient ticking of their geiger counters. The half-ghoul rocking on her knees above the fluorescent water, shielding her horrendously swollen face with one crooked hand while the other cradled a revolver. The single shot that reverberated through the cave and made Piper fall to her knees as the body fell into the lake, sinking in black blood.

Nate held her tighter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND WE'RE BACK!!!!!! I just may be the person who missed this story the most. Thanks to readers new and old!!! Criticism and advice is always welcome and appreciated.
> 
> Up next: Piper and Nate team-up like old times to find a Class A a-hole in the sexiest casino on The Strip: Gomorrah.


End file.
